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Notes
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Epigraph: In September 1794, some accounts were received from the Hawkesbury which corroborated the opinion that the settlers there merited the attacks which were from time to time made upon them by the natives; it being now said, that some of them had [?] a native boy,and, after tying him hand and foot, had dragged him several times through a fire, until his back was dreadfully burnt, and in that state had thrown him into the river, where they shot at, and killed him.' Collin's [sic] History of New South Wales.
[AustLit note: The book title referred to is Lieutenant David Collins's An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales. The reference is to chapter 28 and to accounts that were received in October 1974.]
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The Aboriginal in Early Australian Literature
1980
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 40 no. 1 1980; (p. 45-63)'The depiction of aboriginals in early Australian literature, i.e., that written before 1850, resembles in many respects their pictorial depiction as outlined by Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific. Writers who attempted the longer literary forms on Australian themes — the epic poem or the novel — usually, like the landscape artists, placed the aboriginal to one side. He was part of the exotic background, representing for the post the old order which was rapidly giving way to the march of civilization, or, along with bushrangers, fire and Rood, providing the fiction writer with the necessary "adventures" to break up the drab monotony of outback life. Certain shorter pieces of prose and verse focused more directly on the aboriginal, In these he was often either refined and classicalized along the "noble savage" lines of Blake's engraving of an aboriginal family, or caricatured as a comic specimen of brute creation. During the eighteen—forties there are signs of a third, more realistic and anthropological, approach with the incorporation of aboriginal words into poems and attempts at detailed descriptions of their customs in prose, though still with traces of the old simplifications in the directions of refinement or comedy.' (Publication abstract)
-
The Aboriginal in Early Australian Literature
1980
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 40 no. 1 1980; (p. 45-63)'The depiction of aboriginals in early Australian literature, i.e., that written before 1850, resembles in many respects their pictorial depiction as outlined by Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific. Writers who attempted the longer literary forms on Australian themes — the epic poem or the novel — usually, like the landscape artists, placed the aboriginal to one side. He was part of the exotic background, representing for the post the old order which was rapidly giving way to the march of civilization, or, along with bushrangers, fire and Rood, providing the fiction writer with the necessary "adventures" to break up the drab monotony of outback life. Certain shorter pieces of prose and verse focused more directly on the aboriginal, In these he was often either refined and classicalized along the "noble savage" lines of Blake's engraving of an aboriginal family, or caricatured as a comic specimen of brute creation. During the eighteen—forties there are signs of a third, more realistic and anthropological, approach with the incorporation of aboriginal words into poems and attempts at detailed descriptions of their customs in prose, though still with traces of the old simplifications in the directions of refinement or comedy.' (Publication abstract)
- Hawkesbury area, Northwest Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,
- 1794
