Analyses the circumstances in which predominantly European children have been 'lost' in the Australian environment. Pierce examines the incidence of lost children in the latter half of the 19th century through depictions in Australian fiction, colonial newspapers and art works, noting in particular the role of Aboriginal trackers in these events. In addressing the 20th century, Pierce incorporates the ideas of abandonment and crimes against children along with the continuing themes of loss and recovery. For this latter period he utilises film and theatre depictions in addition to fiction and factual accounts. Underlying the entire work is the sense that the lost child symbolises the "essential if never fully resolved anxieties within the white settler communities" of Australia.
'In colonial Australian children’s literature, the desire to exert control over the land, its inhabitants, and the construction of a national identity has been a central concern, exemplified in the narrative of the lost child in the Australian bush. The lost child trope offers a reflection of “Australian anxiety” (Pierce, The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety. Cambridge University Press, 1999), symbolising the troubled negotiation in integrating European ideals onto an Indigenous landscape (Pierce, The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety, xii. Cambridge University Press, 1999); this is heightened when the lost child is female. Colonial texts place deviant female characters as being subsumed by the bush as a culmination of concerns about national identity and gender roles. This chapter explores the colonial tradition of representation of the girl and the bush as entities to be feared and dominated through A Little Bushmaid by Mary Grant Bruce and Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner. It considers how contemporary Australian Young Adult texts rewrite the lost child in the bush trope through the complex symbolic relationship between the girl and the bush in Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden and The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf reclaims a focus on Indigenous land, identity, knowledge, and narrative, returning to Indigenous roots.' (Publication abstract)
'This article argues that the sexualisation of childhood discourses have a distinct history in Australia. To advance this argument, I will explore the similarities between these discourses and discourses surrounding the iconic Australian “lost child”. In all of these discourses, a white child (here a symbol of White Australia’s future and past) becomes lost in an unforgiving and dangerous environment. This child is assumed to be asexual, though with the likelihood that they will mature into reproductive heterosexuality. This latter point will be illuminated in the final section of the article, which will focus specifically on the 2016 criticisms of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia. These criticisms are the most recent examples of anti-sexualisation discourses in Australia.' (Publication abstract)
