University of Southern Queensland
QLD

Works Taught at This Institution

y separately published work icon Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp Odo Hirsch , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2007 Z1434954 2007 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 1 units) "Amelia Dee lives in the green house on Marburg Street, where a rare bronze lamp hangs outside her bedroom door. No one knows where it came from or how it got there. Only she, Amelia thinks, knows the secret that the lamp contains. But she's wrong. When Mr Vishwanath introduces Amelia to the Princess Parvin Kha-Douri, the puzzle of the lamp becomes even deeper. Where has the princess seen it before? Why is she so bitter and angry? And most importantly, what should Amelia do about it? In solving the mystery, Amelia risks revealing a secret of her own." (Source: Publisher's website)
y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon Bitin' Back Just Call Me Jean Vivienne Cleven , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2001 Z669132 2001 single work novel (taught in 7 units) 'When the Blackout's star player Nevil Dooley wakes one morning to don a frock and 'eyeshada', his mother's idle days at the bingo hall are gone forever. Mystified and clueless, single parent Mavis takes bush-cunning and fast footwork to unravel the mystery behind this sudden change of face... Hilarity prevails while desperation builds in the race to save Nevil from the savage consequences of discovery in a town where a career in footy is a young black man's only escape. Neither pig shoots, bust-ups at the Two Dogs, bare-knuckle sessions in the shed or even a police siege can slow the countdown on this human time bomb.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)
y separately published work icon The Boat Nam Le , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1495449 2008 selected work short story (taught in 42 units)

'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)
y separately published work icon Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , Melbourne : Australasian Book Society , 1959 Z813008 1959 single work novel (taught in 7 units) A classic novel about urban working-class life in 1950s Australia, combining the shifting narrative viewpoint pioneered by Modernism with a relentless realist mode. The book abounds with portraits of working women, married and unmarried, middle-aged and young, zestful and tired. These varied existences form the collective hero of the novel whose social message has lost nothing of its urgency. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Box the Pony Leah Purcell , Scott Rankin , 1997 Sydney : Hodder Headline , 1999 Z114430 1997 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

One-woman play, written by and for Leah Purcell, which draws on her experiences growing up, her relationship with her mother, and the contrast between her country upbringing and city life.
form y separately published work icon Bush Mechanics David Batty , Francis Jupurrula Kelly , ( dir. David Batty ) Lindfield Yuendumu Australia : Film Australia Warlpiri Media Association ABC Television , 1998 Z1662471 1998 series - publisher film/TV humour (taught in 4 units)

'This off-beat series follows the exploits of the Bush Mechanics, a group of engaging Aboriginal characters, as they travel through central Australia.

'In each episode, the Bush Mechanics from the remote Warlpiri community of Yuendumu are presented with a new set of challenges - catching a car thief, getting a nephew out of jail, racing to an outback rock concert and travelling thousands of miles to gather pearl shells for a rainmaking ceremony. As they travel through the desert in their clapped-out vehicles, they solve multiple car problems with wacky and inventive bush repair techniques.'

Source: ABC TV Documentaries (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s359476.htm). (Sighted: 12/10/2012)
y separately published work icon The Cherry Pickers Kevin Gilbert , 1968 1968 (Manuscript version)x401069 Z245424 1968 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

"When the cold August wind abated in its final sigh of emergence from the lean, hard winter months into springtime, the People emerged from the cold, and often leaky shanties, and old discarded car-bodies, which were their home, to gather together their few ragged possessions and tie them in bundles ready for traveling to the cherry orchards, often many hundreds of miles away. Many would travel by bicycle with their swags swinging crazily from the frames; many traveled in old tattered caravans drawn by horses; many just walked beside the caravans through the red sandhill and mallee country, while the more daring 'jumped the rattler', the slow old steam train that chugged across the land.

Wherever the people gathered there too was a spirit of revival, of intense relief, for the "cherry season" meant a temporary release from near starvation. In a good season it could mean some old debts would be repaid. It meant food and toys for the children for the forthcoming Christmas season and, above all, it meant some independence, some freedom, from under the crucifying heels of the local police and the white 'station' managers; an escape from the refugee camps called 'Aboriginal Reserves'. The cherry season was the time for hope, for meeting old friends and relatives, for laughing and for making love. The Cherry Pickers tells it all.' Source: http://blackwebs.photoaccess.org.au/~kevingilbert/books/books.html (Sighted: 12/4/2009).
form y separately published work icon Crocodile Dundee Paul Hogan , Ken Shadie , John Cornell , ( dir. Peter Faiman ) 1985 Sydney : Rimfire Films , 1986 Z1612282 1985 single work film/TV (taught in 6 units)

Mick 'Crocodile' Dundee runs an outback adventure business with his trusted friend and self-proclaimed mentor Walter Reilly. When he survives a crocodile attack, the news travels well beyond the Northern Territory, and a glamorous New York journalist, Sue Charlton, arrives to interview him. He invites her to come with him to the place where he was attacked. When Sue herself is attacked by a croc, Mick saves her. This leads to an invitation for Mick to visit his first ever city: New York City. Mick finds the culture and life in New York City a lot different than his home.
y separately published work icon Crossing the Boundaries Geoff Bull (editor), Michele Anstey (editor), Frenchs Forest : Pearson Education Australia , 2002 Z988055 2002 anthology essay criticism (taught in 4 units)
y separately published work icon Dead Europe Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 2005 Z1186455 2005 single work novel (taught in 14 units) 'The novel comprises two separate narratives. The first, told in the style of a fairytale, is set in a traditional Greek peasant village during and after World War II. Its world is still magical. ... The second narrative is set in the present time. The narrator is a 36-year-old gay, Greek-Australian photographic artist named Isaac. We meet Isaac at a time when he has travelled to Greece for what turns out to be a rather dismal officially funded exhibition of his works.'

Source: Manne, Robert. 'Dead Disturbing'. The Monthly. (June, 2005)
y separately published work icon Don's Party David Williamson , 1971 1971 (Manuscript version)x402002 Z1505961 1971 single work drama satire (taught in 17 units)
y separately published work icon Eating Ice Cream With Your Eyes Closed David Brown , 2002 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2004 Z1134746 2002 single work drama humour (taught in 2 units) A bus terminal in a country town in the middle of the night, where three unlikely companions are thrown together by circumstance. Macca, Dayne and Doug are as different as ... well, vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream. But in one extraordinary night of drinking, talking and fighting, they find their common ground.
y separately published work icon The Female of the Species Joanna Murray-Smith , 2006 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2008 Z1292339 2006 single work drama humour (taught in 3 units)

'Thirty years ago Margot Mason, pioneer of the 1970s Women's Liberation movement and fearless academic, wrote her groundbreaking work and numerous best-sellers followed. Now she has writer's block. Molly, an unannounced visitor and committed fan of Margot and her work, offers a potential solution - until Molly produces a gun and calmly informs Margot that she intends to kill her because she blames her for warping her mother's mind and ruining her life with her hit book The Cerebral Vagina.

'Joanna Murray-Smith's deliciously wicked comedy deftly walks the tightrope between satire and farce proving the female of the species is not only deadlier, but funnier than the male.

This play 'was inspired by Germaine Greer's experience of being held captive in her country house in Essex in 2000'. (Publisher's blurb)
y separately published work icon Fly Away Peter The Bread of Time to Come David Malouf , 1982 London : Chatto and Windus , 1982 Z22123 1982 single work novella war literature (taught in 14 units) 'For three very different people brought together by their love for birds, life on the Queensland coast in 1914 is the timeless and idyllic world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. In another hemisphere civilization rushes headlong into a brutal conflict. Life there is lived from moment to moment. Inevitably, the two young men - sanctuary owner and employee - are drawn to the war, and into the mud and horror of the trenches of Armentieres. Alone on the beach, their friend Imogen, the middle-aged wildlife photographer, must acknowledge for all three of them that the past cannot be held.' (Source: Publisher's website)
y separately published work icon A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , London : Jonathan Cape , 1976 Z476217 1976 single work novel (taught in 8 units)

"Set in Australia in the 1840s, A FRINGE OF LEAVES combines dramatic action with a finely distilled moral vision. Returning home to England from Van Diemen's land, the Bristol Maid is shipwrecked on the Queensland coast and Mrs Roxburgh is taken prisoner by a tribe of aborigines, along with the rest of the passengers and crew. In the course of her escape, she is torn by conflicting loyalties - to her dead husband, to her rescuer, to her own and to her adoptive class."

Source: Goodreads
y separately published work icon Home Larissa Behrendt , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1113719 2004 single work novel (taught in 10 units)

'A story of homecoming, this absorbing novel opens with a young, city-based lawyer setting out on her first visit to ancestral country. Candice arrives at "the place where the rivers meet", the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted. As Garibooli takes up the story of Candice's Aboriginal family, the twentieth century falls away.

Garibooli, renamed Elizabeth, is sent to work as a housemaid, but marriage soon offers escape from the terror of the master's night-time visits. Her displacement carries into the lives of her seven children - their stories witness to the impact of orphanage life and the consequences of having a dark skin in post-war Australia. Vividly rekindled, the lives of her family point the direction home for Candice.

Home is a ... novel from an author who understands both the capacity of language to suppress and the restorative potency of stories that bridge past and present.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)
y separately published work icon The Hunter Julia Leigh , Ringwood : Penguin , 1999 Z129151 1999 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'An unnamed man, M, arrives at a remote house on the fringe of a vast wilderness and soon disappears into a world of silence and stillness. His one mission: to find the last thylacine, the fabled Tasmanian tiger. She is said to have passed into myth but a sighting has been reported... Uncompromising and compelling, Julia Leigh's stunning first novel does not give up any of its secrets easily. The Hunter is a haunting tale of obsession that builds to an unforgettable conclusion.'

Source: Libraries Australia (Sighted 18/03/2011).

'While on his mission, the hunter lodges with a grief-ridden family of outcasts whose father has mysteriously vanished after sighting the Thylacine. The hunter succumbs more than he'd like to the family's scant charms and when tragedy strikes has to further purge his psyche to focus upon his elusive quarry. There is something tantalizing at large here as well as the mythical beast in this soul-stalking story about a group of doomed creatures whose unfortunate extinction is never really in doubt.' - Reviewed by Chris Packham, naturalist and broadcaster

Source: British Union Catalogue http://copac.ac.uk/search?rn=3&au=leigh&ti=hunter (Sighted 14/10/2011)
y separately published work icon Inside the Island / The Precious Woman Louis Nowra , Sydney : Currency Press , 1981 Z239348 1981 selected work drama (taught in 2 units)
y separately published work icon It Just Stopped [and] Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America : A Drama in 30 Scenes : Two Plays Stephen Sewell , Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2007 Z1422200 2007 selected work drama (taught in 2 units)
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