'Cross-cutting between England and Western Australia, which is described here as "a vast and unknown country, almost mysterious in its solitude and unlikeness to any other part of the earth," O'Reilly's novel mixes romance, transportation, and discussion of penal policy, with Moondyne Joe himself, a prisoner who escapes to the Australian bush, re-emerging subsequently as "Comptroller-General of Convicts in Australia," in which role he propounds a system of reform based upon "the radical principles of humanity".
'The novel's plot develops through a romance between an English Catholic with an Irish name, Will Sheridan, and his childhood sweetheart Alice Walmsley, who is wrongly convicted of murdering her own child and held in London's Millbank Prison, after being transported to Australia.'
Source: Giles, Paul. Antipodean America: Australasia and the Constitution of U.S. Literature. USA: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Moondyne
( dir. W. J. Lincoln
)
Australia
:
Lincoln-Cass Films
,
1913
6190848
1913
single work
film/TV
crime
historical fiction
adventure
'It contains the life history of Joe Gilchrist, a convict, transported by the English Government to Western Australia, for some trivial offence. Gilchrist, known as Convict No. 406, has earned the enmity of a fellow prisoner, named Isaac Bowman, who determines to ruin him, and concocts a robbery from a settler's home, endeavoring to cast suspicion on Joe Gilchrist; his plot, however, fails, and he is lashed at the triangle, while Gilchrist counts the strokes. Later, Bowman is released as a free settler, and takes up a selection away back on the outskirts of the Vasse Valley. All free settlers had a right to select a convict servant, and Bowman selects Joe Gilchrist. For a term Gilchrist lives his life regardless of the brute man who was his master, but one day he struck his enemy down. This offence, by an assigned servant, meant the chain gang at Freemantle for life—one of the most hideous and dreaded of punishments—so Joe took to the bush. Befriended by the natives of the Vasse Valley, for years he lived in their stronghold, and was named by them '"Moondyne," the great white chief. The natives, when visiting the more populated districts, were frequently seen wearing crude golden ornaments. Governor Hampton issued a proclamation offering £5000 reward for the discovery of the mine from which the natives of the Vasse obtained their gold. The effect of this was fruitless; but the whites were ever on the alert to trace the source of this mysterious wealth. Moondyne, as one of the Vasse tribe, has learnt the secret. One day, on the summit of the ranges, a native sees a police party, and knows their territory is endangered; he informs the chief—Te-Mana-Roa. Moondyne with a party proceeds to investigate. The party are ambushed and Moondyne is recaptured, and to his horror once more discovers his life's enemy, Bowman, who, retired from the land, has now become a sergeant of police. He is manacled to Bowman's horse, and the cavalcade proceeds to return to civilisation. On the road, Moondyne arouses the cupidity of Bowman, and informs him he is in possession of the secret of the mountain of gold—the price is his freedom. Bowman accepts, and effects the escape of Moondyne, and accompanies him to the Vasse Valley. The chief, on the return of Moondyne, agrees to respect his promise and disclose the secret of the golden mountain to Bowman, but refuses to permit his departure. Later, however, Bowman, in the absence of Moondyne, half kills the chief, seizes as much gold as he can carry and rides off. Moondyne is banished by the tribe, and rides for his revenge on the tracks of his enemy. Bowman loses the track, and perishes on the verge of the plains, but not before Moondyne has found him, and instead of killing, endeavors to succour Bowman with his last drop of water. Next morning, a native discovers two forms lying still upon the plains. Moondyne lived to return to the Vasse Valley and the love of his friendly natives.'
Source:
'Moondyne', Daylesford Advocate, Yandoit, Glenlyon and Eganstown Chronicle, 24 February 1914, p.3.
The Golden Secret or, Bond and Free: A Tale of Bush and Convict Life in Western Australia
Melbourne
:
E. W. Cole
,
1887
Z844941
1887
single work
novel
'This article examines a range of colonial Australian Irish bushranger narratives in terms of their investments in revolutionary republicanism, arguing that these become increasingly contested and compromised over time. Beginning with the anonymously published novel Rebel Convicts (1858), it looks at how the fate of transported Irish revolutionaries is imagined in relation to colonial settlement and the convict system. It then turns to Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter (c. 1879), highlighting Kelly’s rhetoric of resistance and mapping his affinities with Irish American republicanism. John Boyle O’Reilly was a Fenian activist, transported to Western Australia in 1867. His novel Moondyne (1878, 1879), rather than unleashing an Irish revolutionary political agenda, is based instead on an English-Catholic bushranger, and its interest in republicanism is in any case displaced from its Australian setting. Ned Kelly’s execution in 1880 gave rise to a new wave of popular narratives, including James Skipp Borlase’s The Iron-Clad Bushranger (1881), which fictionalises Kelly’s career – embroiling him in Irish Fenian plots – and recasts his political affiliations as criminal characteristics. Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms (1882–3) was also published in the wake of the Kelly saga but is notable for its political conservatism, stripping its Irish-Catholic bushrangers of their revolutionary potential to better serve the interests of a powerful pastoral elite. This conservatism is both challenged and magnified in Rosa Praed’s Outlaw and Lawmaker (1893), which celebrates the career of John Boyle O’Reilly while also re-directing his political radicalism into romance. The article concludes that the revolutionary figure of the Irish bushranger is gradually divorced from any radical agency and relegated to a remote chapter of colonial Australia’s history.'
Source: Abstract.
'The imaginations of convicts in Australia became attuned to the pairing of opposites and this led to strange tensions in their way of representing things. On Norfolk Island the meanings of words were reversed, so that ‘good’ meant ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ meant ‘beautiful’. This undermining of official meanings produced the argot called the ‘flash’ or ‘kiddy’ language of the colony. Designed at first to keep private sentiments from being inspected, it eventually supported a system of dissident actions called ‘cross-work’ or ‘cross doings’. One word loomed large amidst these inversions: ‘fakement’, meaning booty, forgery or deceit. The verb has more extensive meanings: rob, wound, shatter; ‘fake your slangs’ means break your shackles. It also meant performing a fiction and accepting the consequences of it.' (Publication abstract)
