Cirrus@Austlit

Expedition to Manly Cove encounters aboriginals feasting on beached whale. 'Baneelon' - Bennelong? -appears among them. Extended encounter ends with Governor Phillip being speared by a 'stranger' aborigine.

The Emu Plains convict theatre company repays an overcharging inn-keeper by absconding, leaving a second bill unpaid.

Famous pickpocket while on ticket of leave in Sydney tries out his skills on wife of an officer and charms both her and husband after confessing.

A Frenchman seeks work and ends up at a cattle station, where he has trouble settling into his new role. 

A Trepang fisherman near Cooktown encounters survivors of prison break from New Caledonia, including a woman, her dead husband, and the corpse of the man she says murdered her husband and also practiced cannibalism. The corpse keeps returning with the tide.

Expatriate for fifteen years, a man denigrates Australia throughout a coach-trip in New Zealand, until he encounters the smell and sight of imported blue gum trees.

Bush girl left alone while the district is at a dance is threatened by two murderous sailors, rescued by a bushranger, and manages to help him leave the sailors for the law without being captured himself.

Following a similar thread to Henry Lawson's "The Drover's Wife" (and many believe, a direct response to it), "The Chosen Vessel" follows a young mother left alone in her outback hut who becomes growingly concerned for her own safety following the arrival of a menacing swagmen. The story also follows for a short time a man riding in to town to place his vote and his struggles with religious guilt. 

Noble ex-alcoholic remittance man dried out by scheming shanty-keeper in hopes of marrying her daughters richly, falls in love with one daughter and proposes after learning he has succeeded to a title and wealth, but she disbelieves it, turns him down for a local squatter who seems a better prospect, and he drinks himself to death. Similar themes are found in Campbell-Praed's 'The Lost Earl of Ellam' and Boothby's 'The Marriage of Esther: A Torres Straits Sketch'

Alcoholic trooper who buried a drunken man still actually alive discovers an illicit still, but cannot get promotion for the find because it is run by the 'legally dead' man he buried, who threatens to expose him.

Small businessman risen from nothing and working with precarious finances robs from one bank to pay another which is pressing him, and enlists the latter's manager to help him return the money later.

Hyperbolic account of successive inheritors of a derelict and empty supposed gold mine in a precipitous part of the Goulburn valley.