Cirrus@Austlit

'Any attempt to capture the complexity of first ‘contact’ between Indigenous peoples and European visitors has to contend with sparse and often contradictory accounts, where the gap of understanding – both then and now – is far greater than any narrow bridges thrown across it. It is for this reason that the space between observation and imagination in the context of early cross-cultural encounters has always been fertile ground, explored both through academic texts (think of the contributions from Greg Dening's long career, particularly his Beach Crossings (2004), or edited conference volumes, such as Veth et al.'s Strangers on the Shore (2008)) and other works (the 2015–16 joint National Museum of Australia/British Museum  exhibition Encounters springs to mind). (Introduction)

'Born in Adelaide in 1897, to a dysfunctional father and self-sacrificing mother, acting prodigy Fanny ‘Judith’ Anderson was her family's meal ticket from childhood. Her move to the USA at the age of twenty-one – with a letter of introduction to Cecil B. DeMille – might well have been disastrous, particularly as DeMille ‘rejected her as too plain’ (336). Yet this, like many setbacks, was no long-term impediment. DeMille, incidentally, cast her in The Ten Commandments thirty-eight years later.' (Introduction)

'To be invited to review this edited collection was a daunting proposition and it has taken me over twelve months to sit down and complete the task. I did have valid work reasons for my tardiness but I should have done it much sooner for I found the task highly enjoyable, very easy, and illuminating on a number of levels. This is an important collection of essays from some of Australia's leading historians and early career researchers, brought together in honour of one of Australia's most influential, living historians, Marilyn Lake. I learnt so much reading this book, not only about Marilyn herself and her illustrious career but also about the finer details of the evolution of the history profession in Australia from the late 1970s.' (Introduction)

'Mallee Country is a many-layered environmental history of three separate regions extending east from Perth in Western Australia to Swan Hill in Victoria. Their shared name is derived from ‘mali’, a term used by the Wemba Wemba people to describe a growth habit of some eucalypt species in their country in northwestern Victoria. In these semi-arid regions, eucalypts developed a large lignotuber, popularly known as a mallee root, from which multiple stems emerge. The scrubby growth on the surface looks like the main part of the plant, but it can be desiccated by drought, burned by fire or dragged flat by an anchor chain without lasting harm to the organism as a whole, and green shoots arise from the mallee root as soon as conditions improve. This act of mallee-ing, of demonstrating resilience through adaptation, is an underlying motif for Mallee Country.' (Introduction)