Cirrus@Austlit

'...these chapters provide a snapshot of current directions and preoccupations in contemporary travel writing scholarship. They function as a reminder of the work that has been done, for instance, on representations of Indigeneity and of writing marginalised narratives into the travel canon. However, these chapters also remind us of the important work that remains, particularly in relation to travel writing as a form of reconciliation - for example, between Indigenous people and colonisers, and between colonisers and neo colonials. Scholars also bear the responsibility of considering the complexities of representing culture and place in a post-colonial, even post-traumatic world. The legacies of history and scholarship, and the weight of contemporary politics bot enable and disable travel writing. However, what remains is a sense of the importance of this work, as a means of redressing the past and for writing new histories.' (xi)

'In this paper Paul Sharrad suggests that Murray Bail 'could not have produced most of his work without journeying abroad, and that his book of travel observations, Longhand, offers insights into one particular kind of 'journeying' as well as his reliance on material picked up along his journeying out from and back to Australia. While he began serious writing around the age of 19 in his native South Australia, and composed some other stories during his years in Melbourne working in advertising, Bail did not really get going as a published writer until he had been overseas for several years, first in India and then England and Europe. His jottings in Longhand: a Writer's Notebook, show on the one hand, how his sense of being a writer affects his recording of the travel experience, and secondly, how much his travels have had an impact on his fiction.'' (25-26)

'The title of this paper caused me a lot of trouble. I thought the one I settled on was brilliant, but unfortunately, when I came to write the paper to go with it, I found difficulty in making a match. For a while it seemed that my search was leading only to a Celtic sunset. However,it did give me a reason to traipse around Wales and Ireland and Scotland and the Canadian Maritimes, even if in Ireland and Scotland the sun I was seeking neither rose nor set, but remained resolutely hidden beneath mists and clouds. I gathered a fair amount of history on my journeying, and the full version of this paper uses this to provide a context for the cultural differences I located in the poetry. There is, however, no time to go into this analysis of the contrasting histories of settlement, and of the distinct economic, political and religious circumstances in the countries of origin. Instead I will ask that you take those matters as given while I concentrate mainly on poets whose work demonstrates the cultural differences that arose from these circumstances.' (Author's introduction, 37)

'The Internet has changed the way we travel. All around the world, people are using the Internet to facilitate their travel: whether this is researching and buying travel online, or using the Web for virtual travel. Consultant sites and booking agents such as Qantas, Zuji, and Travel.com.au are multi-million dollar e-businesses, and their presence provides consumers with a one-stop shop for travel. The functionality of travel websites is not limited to allowing people to buy what they see, to find a travel idea online and go and do it. Travel sites also allow travellers and tourists to travel virtually: to have something of the experience of travel without actually moving from their computer station. A range of entities, commercial and non-profit, have recognised the potential for virtual travel on the Web. Sites, including those of travel magazines and travel companies of all kinds, serve people who have the curiosity, but not the urge for an in-person experience. For example, Virtualtourist.com is a site specifically designed for armchair tourism.
As the Internet has changed the way we travel, it has also changed the way we write about travel. Scholars have been researching the significance of travel writing for decades. However, little has been written about the ways in which the Internet is facilitating new practices for travel writing.' (47)

'Clare Archer-Lean focuses 'on the textual strategies of journey and impermanence. These can be understood through theoretical notions of trickster, a deliberately incoherent and slippery figure/story, alongside the symbolic ramification of water, representing movement and fluidity, to read Johnson's use of the journey motif. The journey motif in these works can be expanded to included the intra-textual journeys Johnson's writing carries out between its own past and present forms and how this self-referentiality constructs a challenge to the notion of a fixed and stable journal and record of any journey.' (175)

'There are eight million stories about crime fiction. And this is one of them. There are two main ways in which writers use place in crime fiction. The first way is to use place to help create a certain mood and atmosphere. The second way is to use the geographical or physical features of a place imaginatively as a plot device. Sometimes the journeys that are made by characters in crime fiction serve to remind us as readers of these two major devices. Although historically a lot of Australian crime fiction has not focused on place in terms of setting, this is changing as Australia continues to change. (Author's introduction, 204)