AustLit

'Flying foxes coasted at dusk, heavy and low, over Parramatta Road. Everyone in Sydney apologized for the smoke, and everyone added that the fire season was only beginning. In early December, no one yet knew how bad the fires would be, but even so the stores were asking customers to "round up" their purchase sums as donations for wildlife relief. When I took the train to Katoomba, the Blue Mountains unrolled like a Chinese scroll, a few details suggesting an insubstantial world. I had not traveled to Australia for the doom, however—no need, with American production of despair at such high levels—but rather to attend "From Colony to Transnation: An ASAL Conference in Honour of Robert Dixon," at the University of Sydney, 5–6 December 2019. Robert had retired after twelve years as the Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, the fourth person to hold that flag rank since 1962, following G. A. Wilkes, Leonie Kramer, and Elizabeth Webby; the university's widely denounced decision not to appoint a successor hung in the air, part and parcel of our wider habitat degradation. All the same, the conference organized by Brigid Rooney and Peter Kirkpatrick suggested a wider world as well, a model of academic commitment, skill, and generosity. Everyone in Sydney said that too.' (Introduction)