A Ghost of the Australian Interior single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 1898... 1898 A Ghost of the Australian Interior
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A guest on a sheep station in outback Queensland sees an apparition which he believes is an ill omen.

Notes

  • Has epigraph:

    There is doom, there is wrath in the air,

    A curse riseth up from the ground. - Kendall

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Notes:
Written under pen-name of 'Coo-ee' in The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon When the Mopoke Calls William Sylvester Walker , London : John Long , 1898 Z420375 1898 selected work short story London : John Long , 1898 pg. 151 - 157
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories Ken Gelder (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1994 Z356827 1994 anthology short story crime young adult 'Did Australian ghosts suffer from a cultural cringe? Dr Ken Gelder indicates in the introduction to another fascinating OUP anthology that early ghost stories were essentially a "transported genre" that looked back to England as their source. Thus John Lang's well-known story "The Ghost upon the Rail" is based upon a case of murder for post-convict wealth. Gelder argues that Australian ghost stories possess their own ironical flavour, but the gothic tradition has to be resolved in outback locations or deserted mining towns, as in David Rowbotham's "A Schoolie and the Ghost".'

    'Gelder relies heavily on Victorian and Edwardian writers, such as Marcus Clarke, Barbara Baynton and Hume Nisbet, as if unsure as to the nature of contemporary ghosts. It is interesting to see that Australia's science fiction writers, such as Lucy Sussex and Terry Dowling, provide the link between the past and the present. Dowling's "The Daeman Street Ghost-Trap" effectively uses traditional settings to link ghosts with a current horror, namely cancer. Several bunyip stories remind us of a particular Antipodean creature to stand against the assorted European manifestations.'

    (Colin Steele, SF Commentary No 77, p.55).


         Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1994     pg. 152-156
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Last amended 29 Aug 2022 15:28:12
Subjects:
  • Queensland,
  • Australian Outback, Central Australia,
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