Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Readers Invited to Join as Guests at Absurdist Anniversary Celebration
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In Robert Drewe's newest novel, Whipbird, disparate branches of the Cleary family tree gather for a weekend to celebrate both the 160th anniversary of their ancestor's arrival in Australia and the opening of Hugh Cleary's titular Whipbird vineyard. (In an early bit of humor, we learn the reason Hugh has chosen the 160th rather than the more recognizably significant 150th anniversary is that ten years earlier, everyone forgot.) In a suave satiric critique of the public's willful historical ignorance, Drewe shows guests amusingly unimpressed to learn that their ancestor Conor Cleary played a role in the 1854 miners' uprising at the Eureka Stockade, an event that is also celebrating its 160th anniversary: "Some of the adults recalled a school history lesson on Australia's small, swift civil war…. Who could remember the date involved when there wasn't even a public holiday for it?" (72). Hugh himself seems comically oblivious that their ancestor was a soldier (fighting on the side of the British) and not a miner.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Antipodes vol. 32 no. 1/2 2018 17976279 2018 periodical issue 2018 pg. 322-324
Last amended 6 Jan 2020 17:05:12
322-324 Readers Invited to Join as Guests at Absurdist Anniversary Celebrationsmall AustLit logo Antipodes
Review of:
  • Whipbird Robert Drewe 2017 single work novel
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