Cirrus@Austlit

'This discussion of George Loyau's prolific literary output will examine journalism in the wider context of literary production and raise questions about the role of journalists as entertainers as well as social and political commentators. Journalism remained Loyau's working profession for four decades (1860–1898). Yet it is easily overlooked because of his significant contribution to early Australian poetry and history. Loyau's verse and fiction were widely disseminated in the colonial press of the 1860s and 1870s, a time when he wrote for metropolitan and regional papers in all the mainland colonies except Western Australia. Regional Queensland, however, was the starting point and final location for a remarkable career which combined periods of public prominence with harrowing personal adversity. Indeed, the distinctive irony of Loyau's career is that adversity was never more acute than in those periods when his reputation as a poet and historian was being made. By contrast, regional journalism provided Loyau with the material means and social support he lacked in the large colonial centres. A recurring theme for the larger study of colonial journalists is the question of mobility. While metropolitan and political reporting were mostly highly prized by ambitious young journalists, Loyau's career confirms the role of regional networks in journalism and the existence of a class of readers who continued to crave popular fiction and entertainment as weekly staples. Although such journalism remained at odds with the political culture of the Fourth Estate, Loyau's literary persona proved both durable and complex, combining a deep seated sense of cultural inferiority with the celebration of the ephemeral through the practices of popular journalism.' (Extract)

'In the 20 years before the Second World War the frontier war dragged to a close in remote parts of north Australia with the 1926 Daly River massacre and the 1928 Coniston massacre. There was a rapid decline in the Aboriginal population, giving rise to the idea of the 'dying race' which had found policy expression in the State 'Protection' Acts. Aboriginal and Islander labour was exploited under scandalous rates of pay and conditions in the struggling north Australian beef industry and the pearling industry. In south east Australia, Aborigines endured repressive white control on government reserves and mission stations described by some historians as being little better than prison farms. A largely ineffectual Aboriginal political movement with a myriad of organisations, none of which had a pan-Aboriginal identity, struggled to make headway against white prejudice. Finally, in 1939, John McEwen's 'assimilation policy' was introduced and, though doomed to failure, it at least recognised that Aborigines had a place in Australia in the long term.' (Introduction) 

'Thls paper focuses on the power and control over Aboriginal lives from the mid 1940s to the 1960s during the period of administration of the Queensland Preservation and Protection Acts, 1939 to 1946, whose provisions - including control of wages, property and people's movements - are indicative of increasing systematic management of Aborigines.

The Acts offered in fact no 'protection' but increasing guardianship and removal of independence. This paper also examines the ways in which ideas of racial assimilation in the 1950s and 1960s were related to policy and to the treatment of Aboriginal people, with government institutionalised racism facilitating inequality in society and employment.' (Introduction)

'This paper discusses the ways in which ideas of 'the tragic' function in recent narratives of contact history in Australia. 'Contact history' is used here to refer to first and second generation contact between Aboriginal people and the European invaders in Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and I shall be primarily concerned with those historical narratives which attempt to 're-write' history to include Aboriginal responses during this period. Within Australian historiography this project is said to have commenced in the 1970s, prompted by wider events in the Australian community such as the Aboriginal land rights movement (Curthoys 1983, 99). One of the best-known contributors to this project of inclusion has been Henry Reynolds, now the author of eight books dedicated to it. I shall be examining two of Reynolds' most recent contributions to this area: With the White People (1990) and The Fate ofa Free People (1995). At the same time that Reynolds and other professional historians have engaged in this project., there has been an increasing body of work by Aboriginal writers - much of it classified as fiction rather than academic historiography - examining these same themes of initial contact and resistance to invasion. In order to clarify some of my argument.s about. t.he function of the tragic mode in Reynolds' work, I shall also discuss a recently published short story by the Aboriginal writer, Gerry Bostock.' (Introduction)

'‘War's End’ must of necessity be linked with war's beginning and the years between. The exodus from North Queensland to the south (mainly Brisbane) after the fall of Singapore, and the transition from a rural environment to city living, offers a unique insight into war's effect and aftermath from a woman's point of view. This exodus south, which swelled the ranks of women in a burgeoning industrial and martial clime, wrought enormous social upheavals never before experienced in living memory.' (Extract)

'Nearly everyone born in Australia before 1950 probably remembers the Dad 'n' Dave radio serial; some of us have read, or heard read, the stories from On Our Selection on which the serial was (very loosely) based; and all of the rest of you have heard a 'Dad 'n' Dave' (or, more commonly in my experience, a 'Dave'n' Mabel') joke. If you haven't, there's a good one on the last page of this book. Oh all right, here it is. But read the book, OK?

Dad and Dave were watching a dingo licking its genitals.
'You know, Dad,' said Dave, 'I hate to admit it, but all my life I've wanted to do that.'
'Go ahead,' Dad replied. 'But I'd pat him first. He looks vicious.' (p.186)' (Introduction)

'Wandjuk Marika is an extraordinary book. At first glance, it would be easy to misread it. The front cover carries a photograph of Wandjuk Marika - to the uninformed, this photograph can effortlessly be categorised as that of a 'noble savage'. The book itself, in its glossy quality and presentation, could easily pass for a coffee table production. Even the subject matter would seem to convey information about a 'pre-invasion' world, thereby reinforcing comfortable views that 'authentic' Aboriginals are the 'real' Aboriginals.' (Introduction)