Cirrus@Austlit

'This collection of writing from Port Curtis in Queensland by new and acclaimed writers shows how a region's literature can be descriptive of its spirit and unearth its past. It 'lifts the lid' on a history which has been kept all too secret.' - Back cover

Explores a relationship between a collection of works whose writers are connected with the Port Curtis region and that region's history. It examines common influences and the place of memory and memory of place within that body of work. Includes works by, amongst others, Val Vallis, George Watt and Jena Woodhouse.

'For the best part of a decade, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, my family and I were included in the informal list of house guests at Abydos, Dr Val Vallis's rainforest retreat at The Knoll, North Tamborine. Dr Vallis (1916-2009), who preferred to be known as Val, a distinguished poet and Reader in English in what was then the University of Queensland's English Department, had been a friend and mentor to me during my undergraduate years. Val's offer to lend me the key to Abydos was a gift that opened the way to a place of profound natural beauty, inspiration and creativity, and the poems in this Tamborine Mountain collection, Green Dance, are the direct result of that magnanimous gesture.' (Foreword introduction)