'Trollope's only Australian novel, Harry Heathcote of Gangoil deals with the problems facing a young sheepfarmer, or 'squatter' (modeled after Trollope's son Frederic) in outback Australia. Using conventions of the Christmas story established by Dickens in the late 1840s, the novel shows Harry Heathcote thwarting the envious ex-convict neighbors who harbor his disgruntled former employees and who attempt to set fire to his pastures. Trollope draws heavily on his knowledge of the social and economic conditions of bush life acquired during a year-long visit to Australia in 1871-2. This story by Trollope reflects the author's readiness to diverge from the familiar paths that were most congenial to him and to his readership.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (1981 Arno edition).
'Bushfire writing has long been a part of Australian literature.
'Tales of heroic rescues and bush Christmases describe a time when the fire season was confined only to summer months and Australia’s battler identity was forged in the flames.' (Introduction)
'Drawing on Anthony Trollope's novella Harry Heathcote of Gangoil (1874), alongside more neglected material including Mary Fortune's 'Waif Wanderer' [sic] articles for the Australian Journal and J.S. Borlase's 'Twelve Miles Broad' (1885), this chapter analyses the threat posed to the home by the arsonist and the ways in which literary representations demonized the 'fire bug'. This piece also considers how fiction mediates emotional responses to fire, such as trauma and hatred, while exploring how literary representations of arsonists channelled deep-rooted anxieties about the precariousness of settler life and the vulnerability of the bush homestead. I pay particular attention to the gender and racial politics of firelighting as well as firefighting and to ways in which fictional stories of fire sought to assert the security of the (often vulnerable) homestead even as it is endangered by the appearance of an outsider.' (p.63)
