'From the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770 to classic children's tale Dot and the Kangaroo, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver examine hunting narratives in novels, visual art and memoirs to discover how the kangaroo became a favourite quarry, a relished food source, an object of scientific fascination, and a source of violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people.
'The kangaroo hunt worked as a rite of passage and an expression of settler domination over native species and land. But it also enabled settlers to begin to comprehend the complexity of bush ecology, raising early concerns about species extinction and the need for conservation and the preservation of habitat.' (Publication summary)
'Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver’s book, The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt, provides an important stimulus for the study of kangaroos in the colonial setting of Australia, a topic that took hold of the British imagination during the years between 1770 and 1900. While the book focuses primarily on a historical review of kangaroo killing as a manifestation of frontier experiences, it also draws on a range of source material, including images (oil paintings, sketches, watercolours, and lithographs) and texts (letters, memoirs, popular journalism, poetry, novels, and fantasies), to examine the interconnections between hunting practices and colonial development in Australia.' (Introduction)
'My first impression of this book, by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, was that it is a visual delight. At a time when authors have to plead—and pay—for every image, the Miegunyah Press, funded by a legacy from Russell and Mab Grimwade, is keeping alive the art of book design and illustration. Under the hand of designer Patrick Cannon, almost 40 images—resplendent in their original colours—adorn the pages. But this beauty belies the subject matter. A close examination of the painting on the cover, J. A. Turner's The Last Leap (1873), reveals a kangaroo with a spear in its back being harried by a trio of greyhound-like dogs. This image captures the moment before death, signalling the book's theme of how the bloody business of kangaroo hunting was represented during Australia's colonial period and why it matters.' (Introduction)
'Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver have accomplished an impressive feat of scholarship in collecting and curating a record of settler interaction with the kangaroo from 1770 to 1900. It is not a pretty picture, though many of the fine illustrations in the volume do their best to make it so. This sort of exploration of a well-defined – if small – area of colonial Australian experience has only been possible with the expansion of the Humanities in Australian universities in the last fifty years in addition to the philanthropy of private citizens. This elegantly published book comes from the Miegunyah Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Press, which is funded by bequests from Sir Russell and Lady Grimwade. The Humanities are now threatened by the present Australian Government’s current tertiary education policies which will make such research in the Humanities extremely difficult. This book exemplifies the character of research we will sadly lose as a result.' (Publication abstract)
'This essay argues that animal-human compassion, defined as human fellow-feeling with (and not for) animals, is most urgently articulated at points of crisis in human history, such as the terrible bushfires and drought of the Australian summer of 2019–20. Literary history, particularly of pastoral literature, reveals animal-human compassion as a long-contested structure of feeling. The pastoral template established in classical literature, and refined in early modern literature, sets conventions for proper human-animal emotional relations. These ideals are radically destabilised in Andrew Marvell’s ‘dark pastoral’ civil war poetry. This troubled legacy flows through Australian settler-colonial writing about animals, particularly the kangaroo; Barron Field, Charles Harpur and Ethel Pedley strive to intervene in the patriotic myth-making associated with colonial settlement and Federation.' (Publication abstract)
'It felt appropriate that I received the review copy of The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt in the mail the day following the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first Australian landing; the quote on the book’s back cover is from Cook’s diary, accompanied by a ghostly image of a kangaroo taken from the front cover painting, and reads:
'One of the Men saw an Animal something less than a greyhound; it was of Mouse Colour, very slender made, and swift of Foot.' (Introduction)
'It felt appropriate that I received the review copy of The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt in the mail the day following the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first Australian landing; the quote on the book’s back cover is from Cook’s diary, accompanied by a ghostly image of a kangaroo taken from the front cover painting, and reads:
'One of the Men saw an Animal something less than a greyhound; it was of Mouse Colour, very slender made, and swift of Foot.' (Introduction)
'Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver have accomplished an impressive feat of scholarship in collecting and curating a record of settler interaction with the kangaroo from 1770 to 1900. It is not a pretty picture, though many of the fine illustrations in the volume do their best to make it so. This sort of exploration of a well-defined – if small – area of colonial Australian experience has only been possible with the expansion of the Humanities in Australian universities in the last fifty years in addition to the philanthropy of private citizens. This elegantly published book comes from the Miegunyah Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Press, which is funded by bequests from Sir Russell and Lady Grimwade. The Humanities are now threatened by the present Australian Government’s current tertiary education policies which will make such research in the Humanities extremely difficult. This book exemplifies the character of research we will sadly lose as a result.' (Publication abstract)
'My first impression of this book, by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, was that it is a visual delight. At a time when authors have to plead—and pay—for every image, the Miegunyah Press, funded by a legacy from Russell and Mab Grimwade, is keeping alive the art of book design and illustration. Under the hand of designer Patrick Cannon, almost 40 images—resplendent in their original colours—adorn the pages. But this beauty belies the subject matter. A close examination of the painting on the cover, J. A. Turner's The Last Leap (1873), reveals a kangaroo with a spear in its back being harried by a trio of greyhound-like dogs. This image captures the moment before death, signalling the book's theme of how the bloody business of kangaroo hunting was represented during Australia's colonial period and why it matters.' (Introduction)
'Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver’s book, The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt, provides an important stimulus for the study of kangaroos in the colonial setting of Australia, a topic that took hold of the British imagination during the years between 1770 and 1900. While the book focuses primarily on a historical review of kangaroo killing as a manifestation of frontier experiences, it also draws on a range of source material, including images (oil paintings, sketches, watercolours, and lithographs) and texts (letters, memoirs, popular journalism, poetry, novels, and fantasies), to examine the interconnections between hunting practices and colonial development in Australia.' (Introduction)
'This essay argues that animal-human compassion, defined as human fellow-feeling with (and not for) animals, is most urgently articulated at points of crisis in human history, such as the terrible bushfires and drought of the Australian summer of 2019–20. Literary history, particularly of pastoral literature, reveals animal-human compassion as a long-contested structure of feeling. The pastoral template established in classical literature, and refined in early modern literature, sets conventions for proper human-animal emotional relations. These ideals are radically destabilised in Andrew Marvell’s ‘dark pastoral’ civil war poetry. This troubled legacy flows through Australian settler-colonial writing about animals, particularly the kangaroo; Barron Field, Charles Harpur and Ethel Pedley strive to intervene in the patriotic myth-making associated with colonial settlement and Federation.' (Publication abstract)
