In 1902 Jeannie Gunn, a Melbourne schoolteacher, went with her new husband to live on the remote Elsey cattle station near the Roper River in the Northern Territory. Although she spent little more than a year there, her experiences in the outback and her contact with the local Aboriginal people impressed her deeply, and on her return to Melbourne she set down her recollections in two books, We of the Never Never and The Little Black Princess.
We of the Never Never
( dir. Igor Auzins
)
Australia
:
Adams Packer Film Productions
,
1982
Z901254
1982
single work
film/TV
(taught in 6 units)
Based on Jeannie Gunn's fictionalised autobiography of the same name, the story begins in 1902 with the arrival of Mrs Gunn and her new husband Aeneas in the Northern Territory. They have come to take over management of Elsey Station, a huge cattle and horse property. She is subsequently forced to battle isolation, disease, and the white stockmen who believe the station is no place for a woman. She befriends the local Aboriginal women, but is mystified by their culture. Her affection for the place and the people is tested by frequent tragedy.
(Source: Australian Screen.)
Harold White, in a letter dated 5 November 1953 to H. M. Green (held in the Dorothy Green Manuscript Collection at the Academy Library UNSW Canberra) advised Green that the novel is classified as fiction by the Commonwealth National Library, 'as the first edition bears the subtitle "a novel"'. White adds that 'Morris Miller also lists it as fiction, although he adds the proviso that it is not really a novel'.
Source: H. L. White, [Letter to H. M Green, Dated 5 November 1953], Dorothy Green and H. M. Green, Dorothy Green Manuscript Collection (1918-1990)
Echoes of the Elsey Saga : A Research of Pioneers of the Northern Territory in the Epochal Days of the Elsey Station
Chipping Norton
:
1980
Z1219496
1980
single work
biography
essay
We of the Never-Never
Richmond
:
Hutchinson Australia
,
1983
Z971399
1983
single work
children's fiction
children's
'When Jan Morris died in 2020, people from around the world praised her elegant and eloquent writing, and her extraordinary life. Her many achievements included the publication between 1966 and 1978 of the ‘intellectual and artistic high-point of [her] career’: the Pax Britannica trilogy charting the zenith and decline of the British Empire. The popular trilogy, which remains in print, played a key role in establishing the late twentieth-century cultural narrative that the British Empire was ‘a force for good’ in the world. Calling into question the boundary between history, fiction and memory, Morris draws heavily on theatrical techniques to both construct a narrative of Empire, one which is dominated by the adventures of individual imperialists, and draw attention to its fabrication. Attending closely to its mode of address, I argue that Morris's trilogy, while equivocal and, in places, critical, ultimately offers a reassuring narrative of Empire. At a time of debate about these histories, I argue that the memorialising of Morris in the wake of her death represents one example of a continuing refusal to face the ongoing consequences of Empire.'(Publication abstract)
Western fascination with the north Kimberley coastline has endured since seafarers encountered it in the 17th century, writes Nicholas Rothwell.
In 1910 Jack London wrote an introduction for a proposed American edition of We of the Never Never but it was never published. The manuscript, in Jeannie Gunn's handwriting, is contained in a book of letters written to William Peter Hurst and the location is:- MS 6107, Box 169/1. William Peter Hurst papers. La Trobe Australian Manuscripts Collection, State Library of Victoria.
The 'preface', as it was later described by Mrs Gunn, has been reproduced in this article.
