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AustLit

La Trobe University
VIC

2016

Australian Literature (ENG2AUL) Semester 1
y separately published work icon The Broken Shore Peter Temple , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2005 Z1207328 2005 single work novel crime (taught in 9 units)

'Joe Cashin was different once. He moved easily then; was surer and less thoughtful. But there are consequences when you've come so close to dying. For Cashin, they included a posting away from the world of Homicide to the quiet place on the coast where he grew up. Now all he has to do is play the country cop and walk the dogs. And sometimes think about how he was before.

'Then prominent local Charles Bourgoyne is bashed and left for dead. Everything seems to point to three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community; everyone seems to want it to. But Cashin is unconvinced. And as tragedy unfolds relentlessly into tragedy, he finds himself holding onto something that might be better let go.'
Source: Publisher's website (Sighted 22/8/11)

y separately published work icon The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead , New York (City) : Simon and Schuster , 1940 Z462160 1940 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'Set in Washington during the 1930s, Sam and Henny Pollit are a warring husband and wife. Their tempestuous marriage, aggravated by too little money, lies at the centre of Stead's satirical and brilliantly observed novel about the relations between husbands and wives, and parents and children.

'Sam, a scientist, uses words as weapons of attack and control on his children and is prone to illusions of power and influence that fail to extend beyond his family. His wife Henny, who hails from a wealthy Baltimore family, is disastrously impractical and enmeshed in her own fantasies of romance and vengeance. Much of the care of their six children is left to Louisa, Sam's 14-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Within this psychological battleground, Louisa must attempt to make a life of her own.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (MUP).

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon That Deadman Dance Kim Scott , Sydney : Picador , 2010 Z1728528 2010 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 43 units)

Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.

'The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.

'But slowly - by design and by accident - things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Voss : A Novel Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)

y separately published work icon Carpentaria Alexis Wright , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon March Geraldine Brooks , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2005 Z1182868 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 2 units) "An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union, which is also capable of barbarism and racism, but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief." -- Book Jacket
Postcolonial Reading (ENG3PRE) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Disgrace J. M. Coetzee , London : Secker and Warburg , 1999 6173241 1999 single work novel (taught in 11 units)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Five Bells Gail Jones , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2011 Z1735512 2011 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.

'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)

Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Bad Behaviour : A Memoir of Bullying and Boarding School Rebecca Starford , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2015 8338276 2015 single work autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'It is night. They move with such stealth they could be almost floating along the road. I can't see faces, just the outline of their movement. But when the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, bathing the road in an urgent sort of light, I see how they're all gazing up towards me.

''They're coming back,' I murmur. I turn to Kendall, and she puts her sewing aside, eyes on me. They never waiver.

'It was supposed to be a place where teenagers would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.

'Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant–and later a victim–of various forms of bullying and aggression.

'Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a time of friendship and joy, but also of shame and fear. It explores how those crucial experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future relationships, and asks courageous questions about the nature of female friendship.

'Moving, wise and painfully honest, this extraordinary memoir shows how bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms, can be so often and so easily repeated throughout our adult lives.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Boy, Lost : A Family Memoir Kristina Olsson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2013 Z1923431 2013 single work biography (taught in 2 units)

'Kristina Olsson's mother lost her infant son, Peter, when he was snatched from her arms as she boarded a train in the hot summer of 1950. She was young and frightened, trying to escape a brutal marriage, but despite the violence and cruelty she'd endured, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. Yvonne would not see her son again for nearly 40 years.

'Kristina was the first child of her mother's subsequent, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother's sorrow, though Peter's absence resounded through the family, marking each one. Yvonne dreamt of her son by day and by night, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother.

'Boy, Lost tells how their lives proceeded from that shattering moment, the grief and shame that stalked them, what they lost and what they salvaged. But it is also the story of a family, the cascade of grief and guilt through generations, and the endurance of memory and faith.' (Publisher's blurb)

Narrative Analysis (ENG2NAA) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Listen Deeply : Let These Stories In Kathleen Kemarre Wallace , Judy Lovell (translator), Alice Springs : IAD Press , 2009 Z1668600 2009 single work life story (taught in 3 units) 'Renowned Eastern Arrernte painter Kathleen Kemarre Wallace tells stories of her elders and their way of life that she learnt as a child and young woman. Her storytelling illuminates the origins and beliefs of Eastern Arrernte people, and calls for respect for the ancient traditions of the altyerre spirits who brought her country into being. Kathleen's knowledge of country, law and culture shine through in her words and mesmerising paintings.' (Source: Back Cover)
Exploring Creative Arts (CRA1ECA) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Australian Drama Leonard Radic , Blackheath : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2006 Z1294490 2006 single work criticism (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

2015

y separately published work icon Carpentaria Alexis Wright , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Solid Mandala Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1966 Z479719 1966 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
Narrative Analysis (ENG2NAA) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Listen Deeply : Let These Stories In Kathleen Kemarre Wallace , Judy Lovell (translator), Alice Springs : IAD Press , 2009 Z1668600 2009 single work life story (taught in 3 units) 'Renowned Eastern Arrernte painter Kathleen Kemarre Wallace tells stories of her elders and their way of life that she learnt as a child and young woman. Her storytelling illuminates the origins and beliefs of Eastern Arrernte people, and calls for respect for the ancient traditions of the altyerre spirits who brought her country into being. Kathleen's knowledge of country, law and culture shine through in her words and mesmerising paintings.' (Source: Back Cover)
Postcolonial Reading (ENG3PRE) Semester 1
y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Disgrace J. M. Coetzee , London : Secker and Warburg , 1999 6173241 1999 single work novel (taught in 11 units)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Five Bells Gail Jones , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2011 Z1735512 2011 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.

'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Disgrace J. M. Coetzee , London : Secker and Warburg , 1999 6173241 1999 single work novel (taught in 11 units)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Five Bells Gail Jones , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2011 Z1735512 2011 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.

'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)

Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB) Semester 2
y separately published work icon An Angel at My Table : An Autobiography (International) assertion Janet Frame , London : Women's Press , 1984 6808538 1984 single work autobiography (taught in 1 units)
Discover Australia (HUS1DAU) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Being Australian : Narratives of National Identity Catriona Elder , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2007 Z1418401 2007 single work criticism (taught in 6 units)

Catriona Elder explores the origins, meanings and effects of the many stories we tell about ourselves, and how they have changed over time. She outlines some of the traditional stories and their role in Australian nationalism, and she shows how concepts of egalitarianism, peaceful settlement and sporting prowess have been used to create a national identity.
(Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

2014

Australian Drama (DRA3AUD) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

Australian Literature (ENG3TAL) Semester 1
y separately published work icon The Broken Shore Peter Temple , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2005 Z1207328 2005 single work novel crime (taught in 9 units)

'Joe Cashin was different once. He moved easily then; was surer and less thoughtful. But there are consequences when you've come so close to dying. For Cashin, they included a posting away from the world of Homicide to the quiet place on the coast where he grew up. Now all he has to do is play the country cop and walk the dogs. And sometimes think about how he was before.

'Then prominent local Charles Bourgoyne is bashed and left for dead. Everything seems to point to three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community; everyone seems to want it to. But Cashin is unconvinced. And as tragedy unfolds relentlessly into tragedy, he finds himself holding onto something that might be better let go.'
Source: Publisher's website (Sighted 22/8/11)

y separately published work icon The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead , New York (City) : Simon and Schuster , 1940 Z462160 1940 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'Set in Washington during the 1930s, Sam and Henny Pollit are a warring husband and wife. Their tempestuous marriage, aggravated by too little money, lies at the centre of Stead's satirical and brilliantly observed novel about the relations between husbands and wives, and parents and children.

'Sam, a scientist, uses words as weapons of attack and control on his children and is prone to illusions of power and influence that fail to extend beyond his family. His wife Henny, who hails from a wealthy Baltimore family, is disastrously impractical and enmeshed in her own fantasies of romance and vengeance. Much of the care of their six children is left to Louisa, Sam's 14-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Within this psychological battleground, Louisa must attempt to make a life of her own.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (MUP).

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon That Deadman Dance Kim Scott , Sydney : Picador , 2010 Z1728528 2010 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 43 units)

Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.

'The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.

'But slowly - by design and by accident - things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Voss : A Novel Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)

y separately published work icon Carpentaria Alexis Wright , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon March Geraldine Brooks , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2005 Z1182868 2005 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 2 units) "An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union, which is also capable of barbarism and racism, but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief." -- Book Jacket
y separately published work icon The Solid Mandala Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1966 Z479719 1966 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
Narrative Analysis (ENG2AA) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Listen Deeply : Let These Stories In Kathleen Kemarre Wallace , Judy Lovell (translator), Alice Springs : IAD Press , 2009 Z1668600 2009 single work life story (taught in 3 units) 'Renowned Eastern Arrernte painter Kathleen Kemarre Wallace tells stories of her elders and their way of life that she learnt as a child and young woman. Her storytelling illuminates the origins and beliefs of Eastern Arrernte people, and calls for respect for the ancient traditions of the altyerre spirits who brought her country into being. Kathleen's knowledge of country, law and culture shine through in her words and mesmerising paintings.' (Source: Back Cover)
Pre Postcolonial Reading (ENG2PRE) Semester 1
y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Disgrace J. M. Coetzee , London : Secker and Warburg , 1999 6173241 1999 single work novel (taught in 11 units)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Five Bells Gail Jones , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2011 Z1735512 2011 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.

'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)

Re Situating Modernism (ENG2REM) Semester 2
y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Disgrace J. M. Coetzee , London : Secker and Warburg , 1999 6173241 1999 single work novel (taught in 11 units)

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Five Bells Gail Jones , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2011 Z1735512 2011 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.

'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Crow Country Kate Constable , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2011 Z1809112 2011 single work children's fiction children's adventure fantasy (taught in 2 units) 'Beginning and ending, always the same, always now. The game, the story, the riddle, hiding and seeking. Crow comes from this place; this place comes from Crow. And Crow has work for you.

'Sadie isn't thrilled when her mother drags her from the city to live in the country town of Boort. But soon she starts making connections - connections with the country, with the past, with two boys, Lachie and Walter, and, most surprisingly, with the ever-present crows.

'When Sadie is tumbled back in time to view a terrible crime, she is pulled into a strange mystery. Can Sadie, Walter and Lachie figure out a way to right old wrongs, or will they be condemned to repeat them?' (From the publisher's website.)
y separately published work icon Dougy James Moloney , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993 Z517389 1993 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units)

'I'm nobody much That's the way Dougy sees himself. Struggling at school, Dougy is quiet. He watches more than he speaks. His siblings, Raymond and Gracey, are the one with the talent- his brother a star footballer and his sister just picked for the state athletic championships. When racial tensions engulf their lonely town in the Australian outback, madness grips and hot-headed men give way to their fears. And waiting in the rising river waters lurks something even more dangerous. Death is stalking Dougy's sister, Gracey, unless he can save her. Can a nobody stand against such forces? Is there more to Dougy than even he knows?' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Dragonkeeper Carole Wilkinson , Fitzroy : Black Dog Books , 2003 Z1059200 2003 single work children's fiction children's fantasy (taught in 2 units) In Ancient China during the Han Dynasty a slave girl saves the life of an ageing dragon and escapes her brutal master. Pursued by a ruthless dragon hunter, the girl and the dragon cross China, carrying with them a mysterious stone that must be protected.
y separately published work icon Helicopter Man Elizabeth Fensham , London : Bloomsbury Children's Books , 2005 Z1204394 2005 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 1 units)

A twelve-year-old boy cares for his mentally ill father.

y separately published work icon The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf Ambelin Kwaymullina , Newtown : Walker Books Australia , 2012 Z1874962 2012 single work novel young adult fantasy (taught in 4 units)

'The Reckoning destroyed civilisation and humanity has had to rise from the ashes. But there are now people with abilities - Flyers, Firestarters, Rumblers - and society is scared of them. The government calls them Illegals. Ashala Wolf protects a group of Illegals. They hide together in the Firstwood and she'll do anything to keep them safe. When Ashala is captured, she realises she has been betrayed by someone she trusted. Now she only has herself. But when Neville starts digging in her memories for information, she doubts she can protect her people forever...will the Tribe survive the interrogation of Ashala Wolf?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon Jinx Margaret Wild , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2001 Z916673 2001 single work novel young adult (taught in 2 units) With the help of her understanding mother and a close friend, Jen eventually outgrows her nickname, Jinx, and deals with the deaths of two boys with whom she had been involved. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Sabriel Garth Nix , Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 1995 Z822173 1995 single work novel young adult fantasy (taught in 2 units) Sabriel, daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead.
y separately published work icon Sea Hearts Margo Lanagan , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2012 Z1836289 2012 single work novel fantasy young adult (taught in 4 units)

'On remote Rollrock Island, the sea-witch Misskaella discovers she can draw a girl from the heart of a seal. So, for a price, any man might buy himself a bride; an irresistibly enchanting sea-wife. But what cost will be borne by the people of Rollrock - the men, the women, the children - once Misskaella sets her heart on doing such a thing?'

Source: Publisher's website.

Storm Boy Colin Thiele , Adelaide : Rigby , 1963 Z947092 1963 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: Kumurins un Kamolins; Es protu lekt pari pelkem; Vetras zens 1999;

The story of a boy and his pelican, Mr Percival, who live on the South Australian Coorong.

y separately published work icon Tales from Outer Suburbia Shaun Tan , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1450931 2008 selected work single work short story art work young adult (taught in 13 units)

'do you remember the water buffalo at the end of our street?

or the deep-sea diver we found near the underpass?

do you know why dogs bark in the middle of the night?

Shaun Tan, creator of The Arrival, The Lost Thing and The Red Tree, reveals the quiet mysteries of everyday life: homemade pets, dangerous weddings, stranded sea mammals, tiny exchange students and secret rooms filled with darkness and delight.'

Source: Back cover.

y separately published work icon Trust Me Too Paul Collins (editor), Ormond : Ford Street , 2012 Z1846099 2012 anthology poetry short story children's young adult adventure crime fantasy romance science fiction (taught in 1 units)

'Trust Me Too comprises work from over 50 of Australia's leading children's authors and illustrators. Separated into genres such as crime, adventure, romance, science fiction and fantasy, it truly covers all aspects of the classical anthology. It contains fiction, illustrations, poetry and graphics.

Contributors include a prequel to Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody, stories from many other writers including Jack Heath, Oliver Phommavanh, James Roy, Gary Crew, Margaret Clark, Phil Kettle, Michael Gerard Bauer, poems from writers such as Lorraine Marwood, Sofie Laguna and Michael Wagner, and illustrations from artists such as Shaun Tan, Leigh Hobbs, Mark Wilson and Marc McBride.' Source: Ford Street Publishing.

y separately published work icon Deadly, Unna? Phillip Gwynne , Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)

'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon The Divine Wind Garry Disher , Sydney : Hodder Headline , 1998 Z268319 1998 single work novel historical fiction young adult (taught in 8 units)

'Friendship is a slippery notion. We lose friends as we change and our friends don't, or as we form other alliances, or as we betray our friends or are ourselves betrayed ...

'Alice, Hartley, Mitsy and Jamie are kids growing up in Broome before the Second World War. Their lives, although very different, are bound by friendship. Hartley and Alice Penrose are the children of an uneducated pearling master and a cultivated, disgruntled mother. Mitsy Sennosuke is Japanese, the daughter of Zeke, a diver working for Hartley and Alice's father, and Sadako, who makes soy sauce in a tin shed factory. Jamie Kilian is the son of a local magistrate, recently moved north from the city. Together, they unconsciously cross the boundaries of class and race, as they swim, joke and watch films in the cinema in Sheba Lane.

'But these happy, untroubled times end when lives are lost in a terrible cyclone, Alice falls for a wealthy cattleman pilot, a young woman is assaulted, and Hartley and Jamie compete for the love of Mitsy. The Second World War brings further strain into their lives. The four friends are no longer children but old enough to fight for their country. As Japanese bombs begin to fall like silver rain on northern Australia, loyalties are divided and friendships take on an altogether different form …

'This thrilling and beautifully written new novel from Garry Disher evokes an era of Australia caught up in the events of war and its effects on people torn apart from all they know and hold dear in childhood.' (Source: Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon Jinx Margaret Wild , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2001 Z916673 2001 single work novel young adult (taught in 2 units) With the help of her understanding mother and a close friend, Jen eventually outgrows her nickname, Jinx, and deals with the deaths of two boys with whom she had been involved. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Looking for Alibrandi Melina Marchetta , Camberwell : Puffin , 1992 Z88038 1992 single work novel young adult (taught in 4 units) 'Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen, illegitimate, and in her final year at a wealthy Catholic school. This is the year her father comes back into her life, the year she falls in love, the year she discovers the secrets of her family's past and the year she sets herself free.' (Source: Back Cover)
y separately published work icon The Midnight Zoo Sonya Hartnett , Camberwell : Viking , 2010 Z1713414 2010 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 1 units)

'Under cover of darkness, two brothers cross a war-ravaged countryside carrying a secret bundle. One night they stumble across a deserted town reduced to smouldering ruins. But at the end of a blackened street they find a small green miracle: a zoo filled with animals in need of hope.

'A moving and ageless fable about war, and freedom.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Arrival Shaun Tan , Shaun Tan (illustrator), South Melbourne : Lothian , 2006 Z1285263 2006 single work graphic novel children's (taught in 16 units)

"The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope." (Source: Shaun Tan website)

y separately published work icon Captain Congo and the Crocodile King Ruth Starke , Greg Holfeld (illustrator), Kingswood : Working Title Press , 2008 Z1517199 2008 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units) 'A graphic picture book in the style of Tin Tin about a gorilla (Captain Congo) and his sidekick penguin friend (Pug) who are sent by the Agency to locate a missing anthropologist who has been searching for the Treasure House of the Queen of Sheba.'--Provided by publisher.
y separately published work icon Hitler's Daughter Jackie French , Pymble : HarperCollins Australia , 1999 Z15341 1999 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 2 units) After hearing a fictional tale about Hitler's daughter, Mark wonders what it would be like if someone he loved and trusted turned out to be evil.
John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat Jenny Wagner , Ron Brooks (illustrator), Harmondsworth : Kestrel , 1977 Z830203 1977 single work picture book children's (taught in 6 units)
— Appears in: The Macquarie Bedtime Story Book 1987; (p. 190-192)
'Rose and her Old English Sheepdog, John Brown, live contentedly together. They need only each other. When the midnight cat appears outside their home, John Brown refuses even to admit its existence. But he comes to realise that the cat is important to Rose and to allow it in the house, even though it makes him sad.' (From the publisher's website.)
y separately published work icon Just Another Ordinary Day Rod Clement , Rod Clement (illustrator), Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1995 Z833060 1995 single work picture book children's humour (taught in 3 units) "Amanda's ordinary day is different because everything is extraordinary and wonderful."
y separately published work icon Let the Celebrations Begin! Margaret Wild , Julie Vivas (illustrator), Norwood : Omnibus Books , 1991 Z829747 1991 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) A child, who remembers life at home before life in a concentration camp, makes toys with the women to give to the other children at the very special party they are going to have when the soldiers arrive to liberate the camp.
y separately published work icon The Naming of Tishkin Silk Glenda Millard , Sydney : ABC Books , 2003 Z1064675 2003 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 1 units)

'Griffin Silk is an uncommon sort of boy, from an uncommon sort of family. The warm, loving home he shares with his father, grandmother and five big sisters (The Rainbow Girls) is marked by the aching absence of his mother and baby sister. Where have they gone and will they be coming home again?' (Source: Trove)

y separately published work icon Pearl Verses the World Sally Murphy , Newtown : Walker Books Australia , 2009 Z1607159 2009 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 2 units)

'A moving illustrated verse novel about a girl dealing with isolation at school, and with her grandma’s illness at home.

'At school, Pearl feels as though she is in a group of one. Her teacher wants her to write poems that rhyme but Pearl’s poems don’t. At home, however, Pearl feels safe and loved, but her grandmother is slowly fading, and so are Mum and Pearl. When her grandmother eventually passes away, Pearl wants life to go back to the way it was and refuses to talk at the funeral. But she finds the courage to deliver a poem for her grandmother that defies her teacher’s idea of poetry – her poem doesn’t rhyme; it comes from the heart.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon The Rabbits John Marsden , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 1998 Z139449 1998 single work picture book children's (taught in 11 units)

"The rabbits came many grandparents ago.

They build houses, made roads, had children.

They cut down trees.

A whole continent of rabbits..." (back cover)

An allegorical story using rabbits, an introduced species, to represent the arrival of Europeans in Australia and the subsequent widespread environmental destruction.

y separately published work icon Seven Little Australians Ethel Turner , London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)

'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'

'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.

'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)

2013

Writing Fiction (ENG2WFI/ENG3WFI) Semester 2
Writing Poetry (ENG2WRP/ENG3WRP) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Supermodernprayerbook Susan Bradley Smith , Cambridge : Salt Publishing , 2010 Z1761869 2010 selected work poetry (taught in 1 units)
Anthropology of Aboriginal Australia (ANT2ABA/ANT3ABA) Semester 2
y separately published work icon An Introduction to Aboriginal Societies William Howell Edwards , Wentworth Falls : Social Science Press , 1988 6597533 1988 single work information book (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon Past and Present : The Construction of Aboriginality Jeremy Beckett , Canberra : Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies , 1988 Z1575565 1988 selected work non-fiction (taught in 5 units)
Australian Aboriginal History (HIS2AAH/HIS3AAH) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Aboriginal Australians : Black Response to White Dominance 1788-1980 Aboriginal Australians : A History Since 1788 Richard Broome , George Allen and Unwin , 1982 Z1575265 1982 single work (taught in 12 units)

'This book tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians - those who lost most in our country's early colonial struggle for power. Surveying two centuries of Aboriginal-European encounters, it reveals what white Australia lost through unremitting colonial invasion and tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation. It traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of colonial society to a more central place in modern Australia.".

'Since its first appearance in 1982 and revision in 1994, Richard Broome's Aboriginal Australians has won a wide readership as a classic text on the history of race relations in Australia. Now fully updated to 2001, this new edition explains the land rights struggle since Mabo, the Hindmarsh Island affair, debates over the 'stolen generation', 'sorry' and reconciliation, and the recent experience of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Australians remains the only concise and up-to-date survey of Aboriginal history since 1788.' (Taken from book jacket of 2002 edition.)

y separately published work icon Why Weren't We Told? : A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History Henry Reynolds , Ringwood : Viking , 1999 Z1184786 1999 single work non-fiction (taught in 7 units)

Why Weren't We Told? is a frank account of Henry Reynolds' personal journal towards the realisation that he, like generations of Australians, grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past. From the author's unforgettable encounter in a North Queensland jail with injustice towards Aboriginal children, to his friendship with Eddie Mabo, to his shattering of the myths about our 'peaceful' history, this bestselling book will shock, move and intrigue. Why Weren't We Told? is crucial reading on the most important debate in Australia as we enter the twenty-first century.

y separately published work icon Australian Contemporary Drama Dennis Carroll , Paddington : Currency Press , 1994 Z454830 1994 single work criticism (taught in 4 units)
y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Australian Drama : Perspectives Since 1955 Peter J. Holloway (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1987 Z466114 1987 anthology criticism (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 2] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z184553 1998 anthology drama (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 3] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z868625 1998 anthology drama (taught in 2 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

Contemporary Australian Novels (ENG2CAN/ENG3CAN) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living The Cultivator Carrie Tiffany , 2003 Sydney : Picador , 2005 Z1080450 2003 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 6 units)

'It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. It is a brief time of optimism and advancement.

'Billowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic.

'Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land.

'With failing crops and the threat of a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape.

'Erotically charged, and shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel evokes the Australian landscape in all its stark beauty and vividly captures the hope and disappointment of an era.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Praise Andrew McGahan , North Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1992 Z563591 1992 single work novel (taught in 16 units) 'Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australian of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines.' (from back cover)
y separately published work icon Remembering Babylon David Malouf , London Milsons Point : Chatto and Windus Random House , 1993 Z452447 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 48 units)

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

y separately published work icon Blacklines : Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians Michèle Grossman (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2003 Z1072525 2003 anthology criticism essay (taught in 11 units)
Poetics of Transgression (ENG4POT/ENG5POT) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Benang : From the Heart Kim Scott , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1999 Z135862 1999 single work novel (taught in 31 units) 'Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.' (Publisher's website)
y separately published work icon The Slap Christos Tsiolkas , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1739894 2008 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Five Bells Gail Jones , North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2011 Z1735512 2011 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water.

'But each of the four carries a complicated history from elsewhere; each is haunted by past intimacies, secrets and guilt: Ellie is preoccupied by her sexual experiences as a girl, James by a tragedy for which he feels responsible, Catherine by the loss of her beloved brother in Dublin and Pei Xing by her imprisonment during China's Cultural Revolution.

'Told over the course of a single Saturday, Five Bells describes four lives which chime and resonate, sharing mysterious patterns and symbols. But it is a fifth person, a child, whose presence at the Quay haunts the day and who will overshadow everything that unfolds. By night-time, when Sydney is drenched in a rainstorm, each life has been transformed.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead , New York (City) : Simon and Schuster , 1940 Z462160 1940 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'Set in Washington during the 1930s, Sam and Henny Pollit are a warring husband and wife. Their tempestuous marriage, aggravated by too little money, lies at the centre of Stead's satirical and brilliantly observed novel about the relations between husbands and wives, and parents and children.

'Sam, a scientist, uses words as weapons of attack and control on his children and is prone to illusions of power and influence that fail to extend beyond his family. His wife Henny, who hails from a wealthy Baltimore family, is disastrously impractical and enmeshed in her own fantasies of romance and vengeance. Much of the care of their six children is left to Louisa, Sam's 14-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Within this psychological battleground, Louisa must attempt to make a life of her own.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (MUP).

y separately published work icon Shanghai Dancing Brian Castro , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2003 Z1011730 2003 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

'After 40 years in Australia, António Castro packs a bag and walks out of his old life forever. The victim of a restlessness he calls "Shanghai Dancing," António seeks to understand the source of his condition in his family's wanderings. Reversing his parents' own migration, António heads back to their native Shanghai, where his world begins to fragment as his ancestry starts to flood into his present, and emissaries of glittering pre-war China, evangelical Liverpool and seventeenth-century Portugal merge into contemporary backdrops across Asia, Europe and Australia. A "fictional autobiography," Shanghai Dancing is a dazzling meditation on identity, language and disorientation that combines photographs and written images in the style of W.G. Sebald. ' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Sixty Lights Gail Jones , London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)

'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon That Deadman Dance Kim Scott , Sydney : Picador , 2010 Z1728528 2010 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 43 units)

Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.

'The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.

'But slowly - by design and by accident - things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Voss : A Novel Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)

y separately published work icon The Well Elizabeth Jolley , Ringwood : Viking , 1986 Z385481 1986 single work novel (taught in 17 units)
— Appears in: Kokainovyj Bljuz [and] Kolodec 1991;

'Miss Hester Harper, middle-aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dishes for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well. One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm's deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.' (From the publisher's website.)

Australian Stage (TH1720) Semester 2

2012

Anthropology of Aboriginal Australia (ANT2ABA / ANT3ABA) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Past and Present : The Construction of Aboriginality Jeremy Beckett , Canberra : Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies , 1988 Z1575565 1988 selected work non-fiction (taught in 5 units)
Australian Women's Fiction (ENG2AWF / ENG3AWF) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Bush Studies Barbara Baynton , London : Duckworth , 1902 Z820571 1902 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)

'Bush Studies is famous for its stark realism—for not romanticising bush life, instead showing all its bleakness and harshness.

'Economic of style, influenced by the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, Barbara Baynton’s short-story collection presents the Australian bush as dangerous and isolating for the women who inhabit it.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)

y separately published work icon Don't Take Your Love to Town Ruby Langford Ginibi , Ringwood : Penguin , 1988 Z496435 1988 single work autobiography (taught in 10 units)

'Don’t Take Your Love to Town is a story of courage in the face of poverty and tragedy. Ruby recounts losing her mother when she was six, growing up in a mission in northern New South Wales and leaving home when she was fifteen. She lived in tin huts and tents in the bush and picked up work on the land while raising nine children virtually single-handedly. Later she struggled to make ends meet in the Koori areas of Sydney. Ruby is an amazing woman whose sense of humour has endured through all the hardships she has experienced.' (Source UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

y separately published work icon Kirkham's Find Mary Gaunt , London : Methuen , 1897 Z821640 1897 single work novel (taught in 2 units)
form y separately published work icon My Brilliant Career Eleanor Witcombe , ( dir. Gillian Armstrong ) Adelaide : Margaret Fink Productions , 1979 Z817179 1979 single work film/TV (taught in 7 units)

Based on the book by Miles Franklin, this feature film tells the story of an Australian country girl who, at the end of the nineteenth century, wants to make her own way in the outside world.

Rejecting an offer of marriage from a wealthy suitor (who is also her childhood friend), she instead finds herself obligated to work off her father's debt to a neighbouring family, for whom she works as governess and housekeeper. Returning home, she again rejects her suitor's proposal, this time in favour of writing a novel based on her experiences.

y separately published work icon My Brilliant Career Miles Franklin , Edinburgh London : William Blackwood , 1901 Z161522 1901 single work novel (taught in 56 units)

'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'

'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

form y separately published work icon Night Cries : A Rural Tragedy Tracey Moffatt , Jimmy Little (composer), ( dir. Tracey Moffatt ) Alice Springs : Chili Films , 1989 Z142554 1989 single work film/TV (taught in 12 units)

A middle-aged Aboriginal woman nurses her old white mother. During her tending of the old woman, she expresses her frustrations and previously suppressed anger, her own need for warmth and love, and her personal loneliness. Her memories and dreams invade her nerve-fraying routine until the old woman dies and she begins to experience an immense sense of loss.

In the ABC Radio National program, It's Not A Race in May 2017, Marcia Langton notes that Night Cries is the retelling of Jedda as a horror story.

y separately published work icon Poppy Drusilla Modjeska , Ringwood : McPhee Gribble , 1990 Z791794 1990 single work novel (taught in 2 units) Drusilla Modjeska sets out to collect the evidence of her mother's life. When the facts refuse to give up their secrets, she follows the threads of history and memory into imagination. There she teases out the story of Poppy, who married at twenty and had an apparently happy life until, suddenly one day in 1959, she was taken away to a sanatorium. (Source: Libraries Australia)
form y separately published work icon The Well Laura Jones , ( dir. Samantha Lang ) Australia : Southern Star Xanadu , 1997 Z817969 1997 single work film/TV fantasy (taught in 3 units)

Katherine works on an isolated farm run by Hester and Hester's father Francis. Unhappy because of her heavy workload, Katherine wants to leave. Hester doesn't want her to go, because she is attracted to her younger friend. She manages to convince Katherine to stay by promising to give her less work in the future. When old Francis dies, Hester sells the farm for cash, and she and Katherine move to a small cottage on the farm's edge, from where they plan a trip to Europe. A tragic accident and the theft of their money changes their plans.

y separately published work icon The Well Elizabeth Jolley , Ringwood : Viking , 1986 Z385481 1986 single work novel (taught in 17 units)
— Appears in: Kokainovyj Bljuz [and] Kolodec 1991;

'Miss Hester Harper, middle-aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dishes for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well. One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm's deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.' (From the publisher's website.)

Contemporary Australian Novels (ENG2CAN / ENG3CAN) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living The Cultivator Carrie Tiffany , 2003 Sydney : Picador , 2005 Z1080450 2003 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 6 units)

'It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. It is a brief time of optimism and advancement.

'Billowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic.

'Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land.

'With failing crops and the threat of a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape.

'Erotically charged, and shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel evokes the Australian landscape in all its stark beauty and vividly captures the hope and disappointment of an era.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Praise Andrew McGahan , North Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1992 Z563591 1992 single work novel (taught in 16 units) 'Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australian of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines.' (from back cover)
y separately published work icon Remembering Babylon David Malouf , London Milsons Point : Chatto and Windus Random House , 1993 Z452447 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 48 units)

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

Inventing the Bush (ENG2ITB / ENG3ITB) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence Doris Pilkington Garimara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)

'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...

The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.

The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb

y separately published work icon Kinglake-350 Adrian Hyland , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2011 Z1798528 2011 single work prose (taught in 1 units)

'"Kinglake-350 to VKC. Urgent, do you read me? The fire's here now. God help us."

'Kinglake-350 is a masterpiece of writing about family, community, country life and what happens when a day of ultimate terror arrives. Adrian Hyland takes a dramatic and compelling sequence of events on that day and weaves them into a picture of universal significance and deep fascination.

'On 7 February 2009 Roger Wood was the police officer in charge of Kinglake, at the epicentre of the worst bushfire disaster in Australia's history, Black Saturday. As the firestorm engulfed the community, he risked his life, again and again, to try and save people.

'With the fire raging all around, he phoned home to warn his wife what was coming. She screamed that the fire had already hit their property. Then the line went dead.

'Black Saturday was a many-headed monster in whose wake stories of grief, heroism and desolation erupted all over the state of Victoria. This is a book about the monster, and the heroism of those who confronted it. (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Such Is Life : Being Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins Tom Collins , 1897 (Manuscript version)8613172 8613167 1897 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

Such is Life: Being Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins. Joseph Furphy's title gives an indication of the complexity of the narrative that will unravel before a persistent reader. In chapter one, the narrator, Tom Collins, joins a group of bullockies to camp for the night a few miles from Runnymede Station. Their conversations reveal many of the issues that arise throughout the rest of the novel: the ownership of, or control of access to, pasture; ideas of providence, fate and superstition; and a concern for federation that flows into descriptions of the coming Australian in later chapters. Each of the characters provides a portrait of bush types that Furphy uses to measure the qualities of squatters and others against popular ideas of the 'gentleman'. Furphy's choice of a narrative structure to create a 'loosely federated' series of yarns is itself a critique of popular narratives populated by stock characters who are driven by action that leads to predictable and uncomplicated conclusions. Tom Collins, the unreliable narrator, adds further complications by claiming to 'read men like signboards' while all the time being unknowingly contradicted by circumstances that become obvious to the reader.

In each subsequent chapter Tom Collins leads the reader through a series of experiences chosen from his diaries. In chapter two, Collins meets the boundary rider Rory O'Halloran and his daughter, Mary, a symbol of the coming Australian whose devotion to her father will have tragic consequences in chapter five. There are many links between chapters like this one that remain invisible to Collins, despite his attempts to understand the 'controlling alternatives' that affect our lives. In chapter three Tom loses his clothes crossing the Murray River and spends the night wandering naked until he is able to steal a pair of pants after diverting attention by setting fire to a haystack. In chapter four Collins helps an ailing Warrigal Alf by deceiving several boundary riders who have impounded Alf's bullocks. In chapter five, among other yarns of lost children, Thompson completes the tragic tale of Mary O'Halloran, connecting with the events of chapter two. Chapters six and seven take Tom Collins back to Runnymede Station where he attempts to avoid an unwelcome union with Maud Beaudesart. He also meets the disfigured boundary rider, Nosey Alf, whose life story Furphy has threaded throughout the narrative, signs not perceived by Tom Collins. When Collins returns to Runnymede at the end of the novel, Furphy ties up more loose narrative threads, but Tom Collins, the narrator, remains oblivious to the end.

In short, Such Is Life 'reflects the preoccupations of [the 1890s]: contemporary capitalism, ardent Australian nationalism, the difficulties of pioneering pastoralism, and speculation about a future Australian civilization. It was instantly seen as a major example of the "radical nationalism" of the time and praised for its realistic representation of life on the frontier in the 1880s. But it was forty years before many readers realized that the novel was also a subtle comment on fiction itself and that within it were hidden stories that revealed a world of "romance" within its "realist" representation of life. Such Is Life can be read as the first experimental novel in Australian literature and the first Australian literary expression of a twentieth-century sensibility of the provisionality of life and reality.' (Julian Croft, 'Joseph Furphy.' in Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 230.)

y separately published work icon Tracks Robyn Davidson , London : Jonathan Cape , 1980 Z811575 1980 single work autobiography travel (taught in 8 units)

Robyn Davidson tells the story of her 1977 journey across the desert, from Alice Springs to Western Australia. She and a Pitjantjara elder completed their crossing on camel's back. Tracks is the story of her adventure, not only across the desert, but also into self-discovery, and the discovery of the beauty, nobility, and history of the country and its people. (Source: Trove)

y separately published work icon Turning the Century : Writing of the 1890s Christopher Lee (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999 Z397740 1999 anthology short story poetry extract prose (taught in 12 units) The works in this selection, all composed or published between 1885 and 1905, 'represent the way in which literary forms were used to respond to some of the important social, cultural and political preoccupations' of Australia during this period (Note on the Text, ix). The work is divided into the following six sections, each with a prefatory Editor's Note; Histories and Futures; Home and Away; Love and Other Catastrophes; Work and Play; Civilisation and its Discontents: Art and Society. There is also a List of Sources, pp. 374-381, and a bibliography, pp. 382-390.
y separately published work icon Benang : From the Heart Kim Scott , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1999 Z135862 1999 single work novel (taught in 31 units) 'Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.' (Publisher's website)
y separately published work icon The Slap Christos Tsiolkas , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1739894 2008 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.

'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Things Fall Apart (International) assertion Chinua Achebe , London : Heinemann , 1964 Z915126 1964 single work novel (taught in 1 units)
Reading and writing memoir (ENG4RWM) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Friday Forever : Memoirs of Madness Susan Bradley Smith , London : Radcliffe Publishing , 2011 Z1855576 2011 single work biography (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon Griffith Review Such is Life no. 33 Spring 2011 Z1794574 2011 periodical issue (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon All My Mob Ruby Langford Ginibi , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007 Z1381114 2007 selected work autobiography (taught in 3 units)

'This ... collection of stories features a foreword by Dr Pam Johnston that places Ruby’s anecdotes in the context of a country which seems incapable of healing its past or of creating a better future for Indigenous people. Featuring the best stories from Ruby’s Real Deadly, plus many unpublished gems dating as far back as 1992, All My Mob’s portrayal of family life, ‘home’, and life as an Aborigine in today’s Australia is fascinating, often confronting and unforgettable.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

y separately published work icon The Australian Long Story Mandy Sayer (editor), Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2009 Z1629549 2009 anthology short story prose novella autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'In this collection, acclaimed writer Mandy Sayer brings together nine of the best Australian examples of the long story - tales that combine the intensity of the short story with the complexity of a novel.

In these stories, characters grow up, hook up and break up, endure calamitous loss and discover delectable love, travel to faraway places and fifi nd themselves right back where they started. From the exotic to the familiar, the sensuous to the dangerous, these soaring flights of the imagination boldly traverse the vast terrain of human experience.

Showcasing the talents of some of our most loved and awarded authors, this invigorating collection is an excellent introduction to an often overlooked art form, promising to enchant all lovers of Australian fiction.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Best Australian Essays 2010 Robert Drewe (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1731494 2010 anthology essay (taught in 2 units)

'This year's Best Australian Essays offers riveting snapshots of the nation's "current loves and angers, its art and myths and amusements and gender concerns - and its propensity for bushfires."

'From Alex Miller on the creative imagination to Mark Dapin on crime myths, from Amanda Hooton on Miss Universe to Tim Flannery on the inner lives of animals, this is a collection that takes the pulse of the nation's writers and thinkers and finds them in rude health.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Best Australian Stories 2010 Cate Kennedy (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1745164 2010 anthology short story extract (taught in 2 units)

'In The Best Australian Stories 2010, Cate Kennedy presents a seductive line-up of the year's most exciting short fiction, featuring the best work from publications around the country alongside pieces published here for the first time. ...

By turns playful, heart-wrenching, intimate and exuberant, these twenty-nine stories reveal the strength and variety of Australian fiction today. The authors include first-timers as well as established masters, and the result is a stimulatingly diverse collection. ' (From the Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon The Bride Stripped Bare Nikki Gemmell , London : Fourth Estate , 2003 Z987747 2003 single work novel (taught in 4 units) A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the Good Wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who's discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own. Inspired by a manuscript written by an anonymous Elizabethan woman who dared to speak of what women truly desire, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, How long can she sustain a perilous double life?" "In writing The Bride Stripped Bare, the author decided to remain anonymous so she would feel absolutely free to explore a woman's inner world. As she writes in her afterword, "That doesn't mean this book is a memoir; it's many things to me, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and fact, a quilt pieced together not only from my stories but those of my friends. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Indigenous Plays Windmill Baby, Rainbow's End, King Hit, Bitin' Back, Black Medea Larissa Behrendt (editor), Vivienne Cleven (editor), Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2007 Z1366759 2007 anthology drama (taught in 12 units)

'Five plays from around the country which illustrate that the rich tradition of indigenous storytelling is flourishing in contemporary Australian theatre.' (Source: Australianplays.org)

y separately published work icon Don's Party David Williamson , 1971 1971 (Manuscript version)x402002 Z1505961 1971 single work drama satire (taught in 17 units)
y separately published work icon Fast, Loose Beginnings : A Memoir of Intoxications John Kinsella , Carlton : Melbourne University Publishing , 2006 Z1285450 2006 single work autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'Fast, Loose Beginnings is a racy anecdotal memoir of John Kinsella's meetings with the great and colourful men and women of poetry. Since his late teens, Kinsella has been rubbing shoulders and working with a host of acclaimed poets. The book opens with Kinsella on a bender in search of Dorothy Hewett, and goes on to tell the story of his friendships and massive fallings-out through the highs and lows of addiction.

'In this contentious account, Kinsella weaves his impressions of these figures personally, with a lively and incisive commentary on their place within the broader literary culture. Here, in good company, are intimate portraits of Dorothy Hewett, Les Murray, American literary critic Harold Bloom and French philosopher Jacques Derrida, as they have never been seen before. As a highly respected poet and critic, Kinsella brings clarity and biting irreverence to the writer's life, making this encounter with literature vividly alive.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1988 Z359704 1988 single work novel (taught in 7 units)

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

(Source: Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon Trouble : Evolution of a Radical : Selected Writings 1970-2010 Kate Jennings , Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1673296 2010 selected work essay poetry prose (taught in 2 units)

'In 1970 Kate Jennings, twenty-one, stunned a Sydney anti-war rally with a pull-no-punches speech that put "women's lib" on the map. Brave, impassioned and searing, the speech set the tone for the idiosyncratic career that was to follow. A few years later, she was on her way to New York, where she would make her name as a writer and enjoy a ringside seat at some of the most confronting events of our time.

'Trouble collects Jennings's best work from the last four decades. With a polemical anger tempered by a keen sense of the absurd and a fiercely independent streak, she writes incisively about politics, morality, finance, feminism and the writing life. She describes America with the keen eye of an outsider and looks back at Australia with an expatriate's frankness.

'Trouble is both an unconventional autobiography and a record of remarkable times. From the protest movements of the 1970s, via Wall Street's heyday and dramatic collapse, to the historic election of Barack Obama, Jennings captures the shifts - seismic and subtle, personal and political - that brought us to where we are now. After four decades, Kate Jennings' work is as exhilarating and impossible to categorise - shocking with the shock of recognition - as the day it was written.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Wild Surmise Dorothy Porter , Sydney : Picador , 2002 Z982831 2002 single work novel (taught in 6 units)

'Alex Leefson is astronomy's glamour girl, in love with the satellite Europa and the equally unreachable Phoebe. Meanwhile, her husband Daniel mourns the demise of his marriage and his life. Full of Dorothy Porter's customary bite and sensuality, Wild Surmise is an engrossing duet between two passionately estranged voices. An intensely moving verse novel of passions and vulnerabilities, love and death.' (Publication summary)

Women Writing B (ENG2WWB / ENG3WWB) Semester 2
y separately published work icon The Getting of Wisdom Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1910 Z901329 1910 single work novel (taught in 25 units)

'A coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.' (From the publisher's website.)

Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB) Semester 2
y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

Writing Fiction (ENG2WFI / ENG3WFI) Semester 1, Semester 2
Writing Poetry (ENG2WRP / ENG3WRP) Semester 2
Writing your Own Life (ENG1WYL) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Crow Country Kate Constable , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2011 Z1809112 2011 single work children's fiction children's adventure fantasy (taught in 2 units) 'Beginning and ending, always the same, always now. The game, the story, the riddle, hiding and seeking. Crow comes from this place; this place comes from Crow. And Crow has work for you.

'Sadie isn't thrilled when her mother drags her from the city to live in the country town of Boort. But soon she starts making connections - connections with the country, with the past, with two boys, Lachie and Walter, and, most surprisingly, with the ever-present crows.

'When Sadie is tumbled back in time to view a terrible crime, she is pulled into a strange mystery. Can Sadie, Walter and Lachie figure out a way to right old wrongs, or will they be condemned to repeat them?' (From the publisher's website.)
y separately published work icon Dragonkeeper Carole Wilkinson , Fitzroy : Black Dog Books , 2003 Z1059200 2003 single work children's fiction children's fantasy (taught in 2 units) In Ancient China during the Han Dynasty a slave girl saves the life of an ageing dragon and escapes her brutal master. Pursued by a ruthless dragon hunter, the girl and the dragon cross China, carrying with them a mysterious stone that must be protected.
Storm Boy Colin Thiele , Adelaide : Rigby , 1963 Z947092 1963 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: Kumurins un Kamolins; Es protu lekt pari pelkem; Vetras zens 1999;

The story of a boy and his pelican, Mr Percival, who live on the South Australian Coorong.

y separately published work icon Tales from Outer Suburbia Shaun Tan , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1450931 2008 selected work single work short story art work young adult (taught in 13 units)

'do you remember the water buffalo at the end of our street?

or the deep-sea diver we found near the underpass?

do you know why dogs bark in the middle of the night?

Shaun Tan, creator of The Arrival, The Lost Thing and The Red Tree, reveals the quiet mysteries of everyday life: homemade pets, dangerous weddings, stranded sea mammals, tiny exchange students and secret rooms filled with darkness and delight.'

Source: Back cover.

y separately published work icon The Arrival Shaun Tan , Shaun Tan (illustrator), South Melbourne : Lothian , 2006 Z1285263 2006 single work graphic novel children's (taught in 16 units)

"The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope." (Source: Shaun Tan website)

y separately published work icon Bridie's Fire Kirsty Murray , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2003 Z1077162 2003 single work children's fiction children's historical fiction (taught in 2 units)

'Bridie's Fire is the tale of a fiery Irish girl who leaves Ireland to find a home for herself in goldrush Australia.

'Bridie's world is torn apart when her parents and baby brother die in the Great Hunger. She leaves Ireland, and strikes out alone to claim a life for herself in Australia, on the other side of the ocean.

'Bridie's Fire is heart-warming story of courage and resilience. It affirms Kirsty Murray's keen understanding of the human spirit. Starting in the 1840s and ending in present-day Australia, The Children of the Wind quartet tells the stories of four courageous young people, Bridie, Billy, Colm and Maeve, born fifty years apart. The central character from each book becomes a mentor to the child in the next.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Don't Pat the Wombat! Elizabeth Honey , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1996 Z793729 1996 single work children's fiction humour children's (taught in 2 units) A story full of energy and imagination for anyone who has ever experienced the sometimes dubious thrills of a school camp.
John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat Jenny Wagner , Ron Brooks (illustrator), Harmondsworth : Kestrel , 1977 Z830203 1977 single work picture book children's (taught in 6 units)
— Appears in: The Macquarie Bedtime Story Book 1987; (p. 190-192)
'Rose and her Old English Sheepdog, John Brown, live contentedly together. They need only each other. When the midnight cat appears outside their home, John Brown refuses even to admit its existence. But he comes to realise that the cat is important to Rose and to allow it in the house, even though it makes him sad.' (From the publisher's website.)
y separately published work icon Just Another Ordinary Day Rod Clement , Rod Clement (illustrator), Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1995 Z833060 1995 single work picture book children's humour (taught in 3 units) "Amanda's ordinary day is different because everything is extraordinary and wonderful."
y separately published work icon Let the Celebrations Begin! Margaret Wild , Julie Vivas (illustrator), Norwood : Omnibus Books , 1991 Z829747 1991 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) A child, who remembers life at home before life in a concentration camp, makes toys with the women to give to the other children at the very special party they are going to have when the soldiers arrive to liberate the camp.
y separately published work icon The Rabbits John Marsden , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 1998 Z139449 1998 single work picture book children's (taught in 11 units)

"The rabbits came many grandparents ago.

They build houses, made roads, had children.

They cut down trees.

A whole continent of rabbits..." (back cover)

An allegorical story using rabbits, an introduced species, to represent the arrival of Europeans in Australia and the subsequent widespread environmental destruction.

y separately published work icon Rowan of Rin : The Journey Emily Rodda , Norwood : Omnibus Books , 2004 Z1177820 2004 selected work children's fiction children's fantasy adventure (taught in 2 units) In a tightly paced series of adventures the shy, self-effacing boy Rowan, an unlikely hero, takes on one exciting challenge after another to save first his village, then his people and finally the beasts he loves best, the gentle bukshah. The adventures are thrilling, the monsters terrible and the characters memorable.
y separately published work icon The Secret Army : Operation Loki Sophie Masson , Anthony Scott Davis (illustrator), Sydney : ABC Books , 2006 Z1347414 2006 single work graphic novel children's adventure fantasy (taught in 2 units)

'Nicky Flamel, a motorbike racing ace, Andromeda Frost, a beautiful English socialite, Otis Falcon, a young American ex-boxer ... When three teenagers find themselves on a remote island, they discover that they have one thing in common - psychic powers triggered by a recent accident. But it is no accident that they are on Archangel Island, a top-secret institute that trains talented young psychics to battle a "Secret Army" - the evil Nazis and their associates.

'When Andromeda escapes from Archangel Island, she falls into the clutches of sinister SS wizard, Dr Karl Totenhexer, and into the heart of his evil plans. Otis and Nicky are sent to rescue Andromeda, but are their powers enough to defeat Totenhexer and his evil crew?' Source: ABC website (http://shop.abc.net.au/).

y separately published work icon Blacklines : Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians Michèle Grossman (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2003 Z1072525 2003 anthology criticism essay (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Permutation City Greg Egan , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1994 Z455855 1994 single work novel science fiction (taught in 2 units) 'In Permutation City Egan has said that his main goal was "to take the idea of conscious software - whether it's some kind of scanned human duplicate, or some AI created from scratch - and push it to its logical conclusion'." The story involves human identities being 'loaded into computer memory banks where they become virtual people' (Colin Steele, SF Commentary No 77, p.53).
y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

2011

Australian Women's Fiction (ENG2AWF / ENG3AWF) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Bush Studies Barbara Baynton , London : Duckworth , 1902 Z820571 1902 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)

'Bush Studies is famous for its stark realism—for not romanticising bush life, instead showing all its bleakness and harshness.

'Economic of style, influenced by the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, Barbara Baynton’s short-story collection presents the Australian bush as dangerous and isolating for the women who inhabit it.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)

y separately published work icon Don't Take Your Love to Town Ruby Langford Ginibi , Ringwood : Penguin , 1988 Z496435 1988 single work autobiography (taught in 10 units)

'Don’t Take Your Love to Town is a story of courage in the face of poverty and tragedy. Ruby recounts losing her mother when she was six, growing up in a mission in northern New South Wales and leaving home when she was fifteen. She lived in tin huts and tents in the bush and picked up work on the land while raising nine children virtually single-handedly. Later she struggled to make ends meet in the Koori areas of Sydney. Ruby is an amazing woman whose sense of humour has endured through all the hardships she has experienced.' (Source UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

y separately published work icon Kirkham's Find Mary Gaunt , London : Methuen , 1897 Z821640 1897 single work novel (taught in 2 units)
y separately published work icon My Brilliant Career Miles Franklin , Edinburgh London : William Blackwood , 1901 Z161522 1901 single work novel (taught in 56 units)

'My Brilliant Career was written by Stella Franklin (1879-1954) when she was just nineteen years old. The novel struggled to find an Australian publisher, but was published in London and Edinburgh in 1901 after receiving an endorsement from Henry Lawson. Although Franklin wrote under the pseudonym 'Miles Franklin', Lawson’s preface makes it clear that Franklin is, as Lawson puts it 'a girl.'

'The novel relates the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a strong-willed young woman of the 1890s growing up in the Goulburn area of New South Wales and longing to be a writer.' (Publication summary)

form y separately published work icon My Brilliant Career Eleanor Witcombe , ( dir. Gillian Armstrong ) Adelaide : Margaret Fink Productions , 1979 Z817179 1979 single work film/TV (taught in 7 units)

Based on the book by Miles Franklin, this feature film tells the story of an Australian country girl who, at the end of the nineteenth century, wants to make her own way in the outside world.

Rejecting an offer of marriage from a wealthy suitor (who is also her childhood friend), she instead finds herself obligated to work off her father's debt to a neighbouring family, for whom she works as governess and housekeeper. Returning home, she again rejects her suitor's proposal, this time in favour of writing a novel based on her experiences.

y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

form y separately published work icon Night Cries : A Rural Tragedy Tracey Moffatt , Jimmy Little (composer), ( dir. Tracey Moffatt ) Alice Springs : Chili Films , 1989 Z142554 1989 single work film/TV (taught in 12 units)

A middle-aged Aboriginal woman nurses her old white mother. During her tending of the old woman, she expresses her frustrations and previously suppressed anger, her own need for warmth and love, and her personal loneliness. Her memories and dreams invade her nerve-fraying routine until the old woman dies and she begins to experience an immense sense of loss.

In the ABC Radio National program, It's Not A Race in May 2017, Marcia Langton notes that Night Cries is the retelling of Jedda as a horror story.

y separately published work icon Poppy Drusilla Modjeska , Ringwood : McPhee Gribble , 1990 Z791794 1990 single work novel (taught in 2 units) Drusilla Modjeska sets out to collect the evidence of her mother's life. When the facts refuse to give up their secrets, she follows the threads of history and memory into imagination. There she teases out the story of Poppy, who married at twenty and had an apparently happy life until, suddenly one day in 1959, she was taken away to a sanatorium. (Source: Libraries Australia)
y separately published work icon The Well Elizabeth Jolley , Ringwood : Viking , 1986 Z385481 1986 single work novel (taught in 17 units)
— Appears in: Kokainovyj Bljuz [and] Kolodec 1991;

'Miss Hester Harper, middle-aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dishes for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well. One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm's deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.' (From the publisher's website.)

form y separately published work icon The Well Laura Jones , ( dir. Samantha Lang ) Australia : Southern Star Xanadu , 1997 Z817969 1997 single work film/TV fantasy (taught in 3 units)

Katherine works on an isolated farm run by Hester and Hester's father Francis. Unhappy because of her heavy workload, Katherine wants to leave. Hester doesn't want her to go, because she is attracted to her younger friend. She manages to convince Katherine to stay by promising to give her less work in the future. When old Francis dies, Hester sells the farm for cash, and she and Katherine move to a small cottage on the farm's edge, from where they plan a trip to Europe. A tragic accident and the theft of their money changes their plans.

Contemporary Australian Novels (ENG2CAN / ENG3CAN) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living The Cultivator Carrie Tiffany , 2003 Sydney : Picador , 2005 Z1080450 2003 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 6 units)

'It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. It is a brief time of optimism and advancement.

'Billowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic.

'Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land.

'With failing crops and the threat of a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape.

'Erotically charged, and shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel evokes the Australian landscape in all its stark beauty and vividly captures the hope and disappointment of an era.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Praise Andrew McGahan , North Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1992 Z563591 1992 single work novel (taught in 16 units) 'Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australian of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines.' (from back cover)
y separately published work icon Remembering Babylon David Malouf , London Milsons Point : Chatto and Windus Random House , 1993 Z452447 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 48 units)

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon All My Mob Ruby Langford Ginibi , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2007 Z1381114 2007 selected work autobiography (taught in 3 units)

'This ... collection of stories features a foreword by Dr Pam Johnston that places Ruby’s anecdotes in the context of a country which seems incapable of healing its past or of creating a better future for Indigenous people. Featuring the best stories from Ruby’s Real Deadly, plus many unpublished gems dating as far back as 1992, All My Mob’s portrayal of family life, ‘home’, and life as an Aborigine in today’s Australia is fascinating, often confronting and unforgettable.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

y separately published work icon The Australian Long Story Mandy Sayer (editor), Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2009 Z1629549 2009 anthology short story prose novella autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'In this collection, acclaimed writer Mandy Sayer brings together nine of the best Australian examples of the long story - tales that combine the intensity of the short story with the complexity of a novel.

In these stories, characters grow up, hook up and break up, endure calamitous loss and discover delectable love, travel to faraway places and fifi nd themselves right back where they started. From the exotic to the familiar, the sensuous to the dangerous, these soaring flights of the imagination boldly traverse the vast terrain of human experience.

Showcasing the talents of some of our most loved and awarded authors, this invigorating collection is an excellent introduction to an often overlooked art form, promising to enchant all lovers of Australian fiction.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Best Australian Essays 2010 Robert Drewe (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1731494 2010 anthology essay (taught in 2 units)

'This year's Best Australian Essays offers riveting snapshots of the nation's "current loves and angers, its art and myths and amusements and gender concerns - and its propensity for bushfires."

'From Alex Miller on the creative imagination to Mark Dapin on crime myths, from Amanda Hooton on Miss Universe to Tim Flannery on the inner lives of animals, this is a collection that takes the pulse of the nation's writers and thinkers and finds them in rude health.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Best Australian Poems 2010 Robert Adamson (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1745202 2010 anthology poetry (taught in 2 units)

'Selected by one of Australia's most acclaimed poets, this inspired collection captures the richness and scope of present-day Australian verse. It features innovative and exciting poems - many published here for the first time - from our best-known poets as well as daring and insightful works from rising stars.

Together they create a lively sense of conversation, of voices criss-crossing the continent, exploring the many themes that animated and inspired the nation's poets in 2010.' (From the Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon The Best Australian Poetry 2009 Alan Wearne (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2009 Z1626831 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 2 units)

'The Best Australian Poetry 2009 celebrates the originality and verve of Australian poetry at this moment. In this collection of 40 poems Alan Wearne brings long experience as a poet and teacher of poetry, and a sharp eye for the surprising. Bookended with an introduction by Wearne and the poets' commentary on their work, this year's collection is a sophisticated and accessible sampling of recent achievements in Australian poetry.' (From the publisher's website.)

Biographical notes on the contributing poets are included, together with a substantial comment by each poet their selected poem.

y separately published work icon The Best Australian Stories 2010 Cate Kennedy (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1745164 2010 anthology short story extract (taught in 2 units)

'In The Best Australian Stories 2010, Cate Kennedy presents a seductive line-up of the year's most exciting short fiction, featuring the best work from publications around the country alongside pieces published here for the first time. ...

By turns playful, heart-wrenching, intimate and exuberant, these twenty-nine stories reveal the strength and variety of Australian fiction today. The authors include first-timers as well as established masters, and the result is a stimulatingly diverse collection. ' (From the Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon The Bride Stripped Bare Nikki Gemmell , London : Fourth Estate , 2003 Z987747 2003 single work novel (taught in 4 units) A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the Good Wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who's discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own. Inspired by a manuscript written by an anonymous Elizabethan woman who dared to speak of what women truly desire, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, How long can she sustain a perilous double life?" "In writing The Bride Stripped Bare, the author decided to remain anonymous so she would feel absolutely free to explore a woman's inner world. As she writes in her afterword, "That doesn't mean this book is a memoir; it's many things to me, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and fact, a quilt pieced together not only from my stories but those of my friends. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Indigenous Plays Windmill Baby, Rainbow's End, King Hit, Bitin' Back, Black Medea Larissa Behrendt (editor), Vivienne Cleven (editor), Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2007 Z1366759 2007 anthology drama (taught in 12 units)

'Five plays from around the country which illustrate that the rich tradition of indigenous storytelling is flourishing in contemporary Australian theatre.' (Source: Australianplays.org)

y separately published work icon Don's Party David Williamson , 1971 1971 (Manuscript version)x402002 Z1505961 1971 single work drama satire (taught in 17 units)
y separately published work icon Fast, Loose Beginnings : A Memoir of Intoxications John Kinsella , Carlton : Melbourne University Publishing , 2006 Z1285450 2006 single work autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'Fast, Loose Beginnings is a racy anecdotal memoir of John Kinsella's meetings with the great and colourful men and women of poetry. Since his late teens, Kinsella has been rubbing shoulders and working with a host of acclaimed poets. The book opens with Kinsella on a bender in search of Dorothy Hewett, and goes on to tell the story of his friendships and massive fallings-out through the highs and lows of addiction.

'In this contentious account, Kinsella weaves his impressions of these figures personally, with a lively and incisive commentary on their place within the broader literary culture. Here, in good company, are intimate portraits of Dorothy Hewett, Les Murray, American literary critic Harold Bloom and French philosopher Jacques Derrida, as they have never been seen before. As a highly respected poet and critic, Kinsella brings clarity and biting irreverence to the writer's life, making this encounter with literature vividly alive.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1988 Z359704 1988 single work novel (taught in 7 units)

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

(Source: Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon Trouble : Evolution of a Radical : Selected Writings 1970-2010 Kate Jennings , Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2010 Z1673296 2010 selected work essay poetry prose (taught in 2 units)

'In 1970 Kate Jennings, twenty-one, stunned a Sydney anti-war rally with a pull-no-punches speech that put "women's lib" on the map. Brave, impassioned and searing, the speech set the tone for the idiosyncratic career that was to follow. A few years later, she was on her way to New York, where she would make her name as a writer and enjoy a ringside seat at some of the most confronting events of our time.

'Trouble collects Jennings's best work from the last four decades. With a polemical anger tempered by a keen sense of the absurd and a fiercely independent streak, she writes incisively about politics, morality, finance, feminism and the writing life. She describes America with the keen eye of an outsider and looks back at Australia with an expatriate's frankness.

'Trouble is both an unconventional autobiography and a record of remarkable times. From the protest movements of the 1970s, via Wall Street's heyday and dramatic collapse, to the historic election of Barack Obama, Jennings captures the shifts - seismic and subtle, personal and political - that brought us to where we are now. After four decades, Kate Jennings' work is as exhilarating and impossible to categorise - shocking with the shock of recognition - as the day it was written.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Wild Surmise Dorothy Porter , Sydney : Picador , 2002 Z982831 2002 single work novel (taught in 6 units)

'Alex Leefson is astronomy's glamour girl, in love with the satellite Europa and the equally unreachable Phoebe. Meanwhile, her husband Daniel mourns the demise of his marriage and his life. Full of Dorothy Porter's customary bite and sensuality, Wild Surmise is an engrossing duet between two passionately estranged voices. An intensely moving verse novel of passions and vulnerabilities, love and death.' (Publication summary)

Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB) Semester 2
y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon Tiger's Eye : A Memoir Inga Clendinnen , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2000 Z282560 2000 selected work autobiography short story prose (taught in 6 units)
Writing Fiction (ENG2WFI / ENG3WFI) Semester 1, Semester 2
y separately published work icon Making Stories : How Ten Australian Novels Were Written Kate Grenville , Sue Woolfe , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1993 Z271890 1993 anthology interview extract criticism (taught in 5 units)

'Making Stories shows ten acclaimed Australian authors at work.'

Writing Poetry (ENG2WRP / ENG3WRP) Semester 2
Writing fiction (ENG4WRF / ENG5WRF) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Seven Little Australians Ethel Turner , London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)

'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'

'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.

'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)

Australian Aboriginal History (HIS2AAH / HIS3AAH) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Aboriginal Australians : Black Response to White Dominance 1788-1980 Aboriginal Australians : A History Since 1788 Richard Broome , George Allen and Unwin , 1982 Z1575265 1982 single work (taught in 12 units)

'This book tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians - those who lost most in our country's early colonial struggle for power. Surveying two centuries of Aboriginal-European encounters, it reveals what white Australia lost through unremitting colonial invasion and tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation. It traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of colonial society to a more central place in modern Australia.".

'Since its first appearance in 1982 and revision in 1994, Richard Broome's Aboriginal Australians has won a wide readership as a classic text on the history of race relations in Australia. Now fully updated to 2001, this new edition explains the land rights struggle since Mabo, the Hindmarsh Island affair, debates over the 'stolen generation', 'sorry' and reconciliation, and the recent experience of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Australians remains the only concise and up-to-date survey of Aboriginal history since 1788.' (Taken from book jacket of 2002 edition.)

y separately published work icon Why Weren't We Told? : A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History Henry Reynolds , Ringwood : Viking , 1999 Z1184786 1999 single work non-fiction (taught in 7 units)

Why Weren't We Told? is a frank account of Henry Reynolds' personal journal towards the realisation that he, like generations of Australians, grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past. From the author's unforgettable encounter in a North Queensland jail with injustice towards Aboriginal children, to his friendship with Eddie Mabo, to his shattering of the myths about our 'peaceful' history, this bestselling book will shock, move and intrigue. Why Weren't We Told? is crucial reading on the most important debate in Australia as we enter the twenty-first century.

Science Fiction (ENG4SFI) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Permutation City Greg Egan , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1994 Z455855 1994 single work novel science fiction (taught in 2 units) 'In Permutation City Egan has said that his main goal was "to take the idea of conscious software - whether it's some kind of scanned human duplicate, or some AI created from scratch - and push it to its logical conclusion'." The story involves human identities being 'loaded into computer memory banks where they become virtual people' (Colin Steele, SF Commentary No 77, p.53).
y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

2010

y separately published work icon Flaws in the Glass : A Self-Portrait Patrick White , London : Jonathan Cape , 1981 Z443896 1981 single work autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'A self-portrait that is as brilliant original as White's fiction and drama.

'In this remarkable self-portrait Patrick White explains how on the very rare occasions when he re-reads a passage from one of his books, he recognises very little of the self he knows. This 'unknown' is the man interviewers and visiting students expect to find, but 'unable to produce him', he prefers to remain private, or as private as anyone who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature can ever be. In this book is the self Patrick White does recognise, the one he sees reflected in the glass.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage ed.).

Contemporary Australian Novels (ENG2CAN / ENG3CAN) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living The Cultivator Carrie Tiffany , 2003 Sydney : Picador , 2005 Z1080450 2003 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 6 units)

'It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. It is a brief time of optimism and advancement.

'Billowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic.

'Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land.

'With failing crops and the threat of a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape.

'Erotically charged, and shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel evokes the Australian landscape in all its stark beauty and vividly captures the hope and disappointment of an era.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon The Garden Book Brian Castro , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2005 Z1211305 2005 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Praise Andrew McGahan , North Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1992 Z563591 1992 single work novel (taught in 16 units) 'Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australian of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines.' (from back cover)
y separately published work icon Remembering Babylon David Malouf , London Milsons Point : Chatto and Windus Random House , 1993 Z452447 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 48 units)

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

y separately published work icon Sixty Lights Gail Jones , London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)

'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)

Inventing the Bush (ENG2ITB / ENG3ITB) Semester 1
y separately published work icon Ash Road Ivan Southall , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1965 Z116360 1965 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 1 units)

'It's hot, dry and sweaty on Ash Road, where Graham, Harry and Wallace are getting their first taste of independence, camping, just the three of them. When they accidentally light a bushfire no one would have guessed how far it would go. All along Ash Road fathers go off to fight the fires and mothers help in the first aid centres. The children of Prescott are left alone, presumed safe, until it's the fire itself that reaches them. These children are forced to face a major crisis with only each other and the two old men left in their care.

'The best selling Ash Road is an action-packed adventure story, so evocative of rural Australia you can taste the Eucalyptus.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)

y separately published work icon Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence Doris Pilkington Garimara , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1996 Z126936 1996 single work biography (taught in 26 units)

'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...

The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.

The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb

y separately published work icon Such Is Life : Being Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins Tom Collins , 1897 (Manuscript version)8613172 8613167 1897 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

Such is Life: Being Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins. Joseph Furphy's title gives an indication of the complexity of the narrative that will unravel before a persistent reader. In chapter one, the narrator, Tom Collins, joins a group of bullockies to camp for the night a few miles from Runnymede Station. Their conversations reveal many of the issues that arise throughout the rest of the novel: the ownership of, or control of access to, pasture; ideas of providence, fate and superstition; and a concern for federation that flows into descriptions of the coming Australian in later chapters. Each of the characters provides a portrait of bush types that Furphy uses to measure the qualities of squatters and others against popular ideas of the 'gentleman'. Furphy's choice of a narrative structure to create a 'loosely federated' series of yarns is itself a critique of popular narratives populated by stock characters who are driven by action that leads to predictable and uncomplicated conclusions. Tom Collins, the unreliable narrator, adds further complications by claiming to 'read men like signboards' while all the time being unknowingly contradicted by circumstances that become obvious to the reader.

In each subsequent chapter Tom Collins leads the reader through a series of experiences chosen from his diaries. In chapter two, Collins meets the boundary rider Rory O'Halloran and his daughter, Mary, a symbol of the coming Australian whose devotion to her father will have tragic consequences in chapter five. There are many links between chapters like this one that remain invisible to Collins, despite his attempts to understand the 'controlling alternatives' that affect our lives. In chapter three Tom loses his clothes crossing the Murray River and spends the night wandering naked until he is able to steal a pair of pants after diverting attention by setting fire to a haystack. In chapter four Collins helps an ailing Warrigal Alf by deceiving several boundary riders who have impounded Alf's bullocks. In chapter five, among other yarns of lost children, Thompson completes the tragic tale of Mary O'Halloran, connecting with the events of chapter two. Chapters six and seven take Tom Collins back to Runnymede Station where he attempts to avoid an unwelcome union with Maud Beaudesart. He also meets the disfigured boundary rider, Nosey Alf, whose life story Furphy has threaded throughout the narrative, signs not perceived by Tom Collins. When Collins returns to Runnymede at the end of the novel, Furphy ties up more loose narrative threads, but Tom Collins, the narrator, remains oblivious to the end.

In short, Such Is Life 'reflects the preoccupations of [the 1890s]: contemporary capitalism, ardent Australian nationalism, the difficulties of pioneering pastoralism, and speculation about a future Australian civilization. It was instantly seen as a major example of the "radical nationalism" of the time and praised for its realistic representation of life on the frontier in the 1880s. But it was forty years before many readers realized that the novel was also a subtle comment on fiction itself and that within it were hidden stories that revealed a world of "romance" within its "realist" representation of life. Such Is Life can be read as the first experimental novel in Australian literature and the first Australian literary expression of a twentieth-century sensibility of the provisionality of life and reality.' (Julian Croft, 'Joseph Furphy.' in Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 230.)

y separately published work icon Tracks Robyn Davidson , London : Jonathan Cape , 1980 Z811575 1980 single work autobiography travel (taught in 8 units)

Robyn Davidson tells the story of her 1977 journey across the desert, from Alice Springs to Western Australia. She and a Pitjantjara elder completed their crossing on camel's back. Tracks is the story of her adventure, not only across the desert, but also into self-discovery, and the discovery of the beauty, nobility, and history of the country and its people. (Source: Trove)

y separately published work icon Turning the Century : Writing of the 1890s Christopher Lee (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999 Z397740 1999 anthology short story poetry extract prose (taught in 12 units) The works in this selection, all composed or published between 1885 and 1905, 'represent the way in which literary forms were used to respond to some of the important social, cultural and political preoccupations' of Australia during this period (Note on the Text, ix). The work is divided into the following six sections, each with a prefatory Editor's Note; Histories and Futures; Home and Away; Love and Other Catastrophes; Work and Play; Civilisation and its Discontents: Art and Society. There is also a List of Sources, pp. 374-381, and a bibliography, pp. 382-390.
Minds, Madness and Literature (ENG4MML) Semester 1
y separately published work icon The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Michael Gow , Sydney : Currency Press Playbox Theatre , 2002 Z980470 2002 single work drama (taught in 1 units)

'As Richard Mahony struggles with survival, identity and sanity, with one foot in the old country and a toe-hold in the new, his life gallops alongside the great events of the nineteenth century. Written with enormous emotional power, this is the spiralling story of a nation’s turbulent adolescence.' (Publisher's abstract.)

y separately published work icon Toy Symphony Michael Gow , 2007 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2008 Z1440999 2007 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

'Roland Henning has writer's block. When he tries to explain the situation to a therapist, his story begins to tumble back and forth between his childhood in The Shire and his work as a playwright. At the root of it all is that extraordinary day in primary school which shattered his boyhood and plunged him headlong into the dizzy circus of life and art.'

Source: Belvoir Street website, http://www.belvoir.com.au
Sighted: 05/11/2007

y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

Reading and writing memoir (ENG4RWM) Semester 1
Women Writing B (ENG2WWB / ENG3WWB) Semester 2
y separately published work icon The Getting of Wisdom Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1910 Z901329 1910 single work novel (taught in 25 units)

'A coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.' (From the publisher's website.)

Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB) Semester 2
y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

Writing Fiction (ENG2WFI / ENG3WFI) Semester 1
Writing fiction (ENG4WRF) Semester 2
Writing your Own Life (ENG1WYL) Semester 2
y separately published work icon The Arrival Shaun Tan , Shaun Tan (illustrator), South Melbourne : Lothian , 2006 Z1285263 2006 single work graphic novel children's (taught in 16 units)

"The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope." (Source: Shaun Tan website)

y separately published work icon Bridie's Fire Kirsty Murray , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2003 Z1077162 2003 single work children's fiction children's historical fiction (taught in 2 units)

'Bridie's Fire is the tale of a fiery Irish girl who leaves Ireland to find a home for herself in goldrush Australia.

'Bridie's world is torn apart when her parents and baby brother die in the Great Hunger. She leaves Ireland, and strikes out alone to claim a life for herself in Australia, on the other side of the ocean.

'Bridie's Fire is heart-warming story of courage and resilience. It affirms Kirsty Murray's keen understanding of the human spirit. Starting in the 1840s and ending in present-day Australia, The Children of the Wind quartet tells the stories of four courageous young people, Bridie, Billy, Colm and Maeve, born fifty years apart. The central character from each book becomes a mentor to the child in the next.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Don't Pat the Wombat! Elizabeth Honey , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1996 Z793729 1996 single work children's fiction humour children's (taught in 2 units) A story full of energy and imagination for anyone who has ever experienced the sometimes dubious thrills of a school camp.
John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat Jenny Wagner , Ron Brooks (illustrator), Harmondsworth : Kestrel , 1977 Z830203 1977 single work picture book children's (taught in 6 units)
— Appears in: The Macquarie Bedtime Story Book 1987; (p. 190-192)
'Rose and her Old English Sheepdog, John Brown, live contentedly together. They need only each other. When the midnight cat appears outside their home, John Brown refuses even to admit its existence. But he comes to realise that the cat is important to Rose and to allow it in the house, even though it makes him sad.' (From the publisher's website.)
y separately published work icon Just Another Ordinary Day Rod Clement , Rod Clement (illustrator), Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1995 Z833060 1995 single work picture book children's humour (taught in 3 units) "Amanda's ordinary day is different because everything is extraordinary and wonderful."
y separately published work icon Let the Celebrations Begin! Margaret Wild , Julie Vivas (illustrator), Norwood : Omnibus Books , 1991 Z829747 1991 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) A child, who remembers life at home before life in a concentration camp, makes toys with the women to give to the other children at the very special party they are going to have when the soldiers arrive to liberate the camp.
y separately published work icon The Rabbits John Marsden , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 1998 Z139449 1998 single work picture book children's (taught in 11 units)

"The rabbits came many grandparents ago.

They build houses, made roads, had children.

They cut down trees.

A whole continent of rabbits..." (back cover)

An allegorical story using rabbits, an introduced species, to represent the arrival of Europeans in Australia and the subsequent widespread environmental destruction.

y separately published work icon Rowan of Rin : The Journey Emily Rodda , Norwood : Omnibus Books , 2004 Z1177820 2004 selected work children's fiction children's fantasy adventure (taught in 2 units) In a tightly paced series of adventures the shy, self-effacing boy Rowan, an unlikely hero, takes on one exciting challenge after another to save first his village, then his people and finally the beasts he loves best, the gentle bukshah. The adventures are thrilling, the monsters terrible and the characters memorable.
y separately published work icon The Secret Army : Operation Loki Sophie Masson , Anthony Scott Davis (illustrator), Sydney : ABC Books , 2006 Z1347414 2006 single work graphic novel children's adventure fantasy (taught in 2 units)

'Nicky Flamel, a motorbike racing ace, Andromeda Frost, a beautiful English socialite, Otis Falcon, a young American ex-boxer ... When three teenagers find themselves on a remote island, they discover that they have one thing in common - psychic powers triggered by a recent accident. But it is no accident that they are on Archangel Island, a top-secret institute that trains talented young psychics to battle a "Secret Army" - the evil Nazis and their associates.

'When Andromeda escapes from Archangel Island, she falls into the clutches of sinister SS wizard, Dr Karl Totenhexer, and into the heart of his evil plans. Otis and Nicky are sent to rescue Andromeda, but are their powers enough to defeat Totenhexer and his evil crew?' Source: ABC website (http://shop.abc.net.au/).

y separately published work icon Seven Little Australians Ethel Turner , London Melbourne : Ward, Lock and Bowden , 1894 Z863667 1894 single work children's fiction children's (taught in 25 units)

'Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.'

'Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.

'Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Burnt Stick Anthony Hill , Ringwood London New York (City) : Viking , 1994 Z571934 1994 single work novella young adult (taught in 1 units) The story of John Jagamarra, who was taken from his mother and grew up at the Pearl Bay Mission for Aboriginal Children.
y separately published work icon The Children of Mirrabooka Judith Arthy , Ringwood : Puffin , 1997 Z123065 1997 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units)

'A young girl's life changes when she visits her great-aunt in the Queensland countryside, and learns of the strange, in triguing history of Mirrabooka.'

y separately published work icon Deadly, Unna? Phillip Gwynne , Ringwood : Penguin , 1998 Z517608 1998 single work novel young adult (taught in 20 units)

'"Deadly, unna?" He was always saying that. All the Nungas did, but Dumby more than any of them. Dumby Red and Blacky don't have a lot in common. Dumby's the star of the footy team, he's got a killer smile and the knack with girls, and he's a Nunga. Blacky's a gutless wonder, needs braces, never knows what to say, and he's white. But they're friends... and it could be deadly, unna? This gutsy novel, set in a small coastal town in South Australia is a rites-of-passage story about two boys confronting the depth of racism that exists all around them.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon The Divine Wind Garry Disher , Sydney : Hodder Headline , 1998 Z268319 1998 single work novel historical fiction young adult (taught in 8 units)

'Friendship is a slippery notion. We lose friends as we change and our friends don't, or as we form other alliances, or as we betray our friends or are ourselves betrayed ...

'Alice, Hartley, Mitsy and Jamie are kids growing up in Broome before the Second World War. Their lives, although very different, are bound by friendship. Hartley and Alice Penrose are the children of an uneducated pearling master and a cultivated, disgruntled mother. Mitsy Sennosuke is Japanese, the daughter of Zeke, a diver working for Hartley and Alice's father, and Sadako, who makes soy sauce in a tin shed factory. Jamie Kilian is the son of a local magistrate, recently moved north from the city. Together, they unconsciously cross the boundaries of class and race, as they swim, joke and watch films in the cinema in Sheba Lane.

'But these happy, untroubled times end when lives are lost in a terrible cyclone, Alice falls for a wealthy cattleman pilot, a young woman is assaulted, and Hartley and Jamie compete for the love of Mitsy. The Second World War brings further strain into their lives. The four friends are no longer children but old enough to fight for their country. As Japanese bombs begin to fall like silver rain on northern Australia, loyalties are divided and friendships take on an altogether different form …

'This thrilling and beautifully written new novel from Garry Disher evokes an era of Australia caught up in the events of war and its effects on people torn apart from all they know and hold dear in childhood.' (Source: Publisher's website)

y separately published work icon Do Not Go Around the Edges : Poems Daisy Utemorrah , Broome : Magabala Books , 1990 Z232069 1990 selected work poetry autobiography children's (taught in 3 units) Contains poems and the life story of Daisy Utemorrah at Kunmunya Mission and her later work as a kindergarten teacher, writer and linguist.
y separately published work icon The Drover's Boy Ted Egan , Robert Ingpen (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 1997 Z946083 1997 single work picture book poetry children's (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo : For the Children of Gunbalanya Alison Lester , Alison Lester (illustrator), Sydney : Hodder Headline , 2000 Z14074 2000 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units)

'When Ernie goes to live in an Aboriginal community in northern Australia, the people, climate, plants and animals are all new to him. Here are his letters to Clive, Nicky, Rosie, Frank, Tessa and Celeste, describing the life he discovers with his new friends in their wild and beautiful land.

'Alison Lester visited Arnhem Land in 1996 and 1997 as a guest of the Gunbalanya Community School with her friend and fellow author Liz Honey. Together they worked with staff and students of the school to produce poems, plays, puppets and paintings. This book is based on a story the upper Primary students made about their lives, called We Love Gunbalanya . Arnhem Land is owned by the Aboriginal people who have lived there for more than 50,000 years. There are many different tribes and language groups throughout Arnhem Land, but at Gunbalanya, where this book is set, the main language spoken is Kunwinjku. ' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Fang Fang's Chinese New Year Sally Rippin , Sally Rippin (illustrator), Norwood : Omnibus Books , 1996 Z863902 1996 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units) Fang Fang's fears that her friend Lisa won't enjoy the Chinese New Year celebrations are put to rest as Lisa has a wonderful time tasting the different foods and watching the Dragon Dance.
y separately published work icon Marty and Mei-Ling Phil Cummings , Craig Smith (illustrator), Milsons Point : Random House , 1995 Z847488 1995 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units) Marty notices anything different and likes to tell everybody. He notices he is different too, but to friends like Mei-Ling it does not matter.
y separately published work icon Mr Plunkett's Pool Gillian Rubinstein , Terry Denton (illustrator), Milsons Point : Random House , 1992 Z817954 1992 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units) It's hot and Mr Plunkett has a pool but he won't share it with anyone. The children next door think up lots of ways to encourage him to change his mind but he remains firm until twins, Kim and Lee, invent the Ultimate Vintoopling Machine.(Source: Back cover)
y separately published work icon My Girragundji Meme McDonald , Boori Pryor , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1998 Z834922 1998 single work children's fiction children's humour (taught in 8 units) 'Alive with humour, this is the vivid story of a boy growing up between two worlds. With Girragundji, the little green tree frog, he finds the courage to face the Hairyman, the bullies at school, and also learns the lessons of manhood that his father teaches him. A young boy growing up in a large family and caught between Koori and white worlds, finds his attachment to a little tree frog gives him the courage to face his fears.' Source: Libraries Australia.
y separately published work icon My Place : The Story of Australia from Now to Then My Place Nadia Wheatley , Donna Rawlins , Donna Rawlins (illustrator), Blackburn : Collins Dove , 1987 Z795146 1987 single work picture book children's historical fiction (taught in 7 units)

'My Place, the classic Australian picture book, is a "time machine" which takes the reader back into the past. It depicts the history of one particular piece of land in Sydney from 1788 to 1988 through the stories of the various children who have lived there. It aims to teach the reader about the history of Australia, about families, settlers, multiculturalism, and the traditional owners of the land. Each child's story covers a decade in time, showing their particular dress, customs and family life.

'The book also features maps that the successive generations of children have 'drawn' which demonstrate the things that have changed - as well as the things that have remained constant. My Place ultimately aims to show "that everyone is part of History" and that "every place has a story as old as the earth".' -- Provided by publisher (2008 ed.)

y separately published work icon The Rabbits John Marsden , Shaun Tan (illustrator), Port Melbourne : Lothian , 1998 Z139449 1998 single work picture book children's (taught in 11 units)

"The rabbits came many grandparents ago.

They build houses, made roads, had children.

They cut down trees.

A whole continent of rabbits..." (back cover)

An allegorical story using rabbits, an introduced species, to represent the arrival of Europeans in Australia and the subsequent widespread environmental destruction.

y separately published work icon Speak Chinese, Fang Fang! Sally Rippin , Sally Rippin (illustrator), Norwood : Omnibus Books , 1996 Z863905 1996 single work picture book children's (taught in 1 units)

'Fang Fang is a young girl who migrated to Australia from China with her parents when she was little. Her desire to be as Australian as her classmates brings her into conflict with her mother, who is anxious that Fang Fang does not lose her cultural heritage. However, when Fang Fang's cousin Lily visits from China, Fang Fang is delighted to find that Lily speaks perfect English and is interested in the same music and singers.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon Tucker Ian Abdulla , Ian Abdulla (illustrator), South Australia : Omnibus Books , 1994 Z849399 1994 single work single work single work picture book autobiography children's (taught in 1 units)

The Murray River of the 1950s was full of fish, and its surrounding landscape covered with vineyards and orchards. As a young boy Ian ranged along its banks and backwaters, catching yabbies, hunting swans and camping along the creeks at night while fishing for pondi, or cod.

But if tucker was plentiful, money was not, for there were few employment opportunities for Aboriginal people.

Ian's narrative paintings recall the stories of his youth.

Aboriginal Australia (ANT2ABA / ANT3ABA) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Past and Present : The Construction of Aboriginality Jeremy Beckett , Canberra : Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies , 1988 Z1575565 1988 selected work non-fiction (taught in 5 units)
Australian Aboriginal History (HIS2AAH / HIS3AAH) Semester 2
y separately published work icon Aboriginal Australians : Black Response to White Dominance 1788-1980 Aboriginal Australians : A History Since 1788 Richard Broome , George Allen and Unwin , 1982 Z1575265 1982 single work (taught in 12 units)

'This book tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians - those who lost most in our country's early colonial struggle for power. Surveying two centuries of Aboriginal-European encounters, it reveals what white Australia lost through unremitting colonial invasion and tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation. It traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of colonial society to a more central place in modern Australia.".

'Since its first appearance in 1982 and revision in 1994, Richard Broome's Aboriginal Australians has won a wide readership as a classic text on the history of race relations in Australia. Now fully updated to 2001, this new edition explains the land rights struggle since Mabo, the Hindmarsh Island affair, debates over the 'stolen generation', 'sorry' and reconciliation, and the recent experience of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Australians remains the only concise and up-to-date survey of Aboriginal history since 1788.' (Taken from book jacket of 2002 edition.)

y separately published work icon Why Weren't We Told? : A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History Henry Reynolds , Ringwood : Viking , 1999 Z1184786 1999 single work non-fiction (taught in 7 units)

Why Weren't We Told? is a frank account of Henry Reynolds' personal journal towards the realisation that he, like generations of Australians, grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past. From the author's unforgettable encounter in a North Queensland jail with injustice towards Aboriginal children, to his friendship with Eddie Mabo, to his shattering of the myths about our 'peaceful' history, this bestselling book will shock, move and intrigue. Why Weren't We Told? is crucial reading on the most important debate in Australia as we enter the twenty-first century.

y separately published work icon Blacklines : Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians Michèle Grossman (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2003 Z1072525 2003 anthology criticism essay (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Australian Contemporary Drama Dennis Carroll , Paddington : Currency Press , 1994 Z454830 1994 single work criticism (taught in 4 units)
y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Australian Drama : Perspectives Since 1955 Peter J. Holloway (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1987 Z466114 1987 anthology criticism (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Room to Move Hannie Rayson , Montmorency : Yackandandah Playscripts , 1985 Z141803 1985 single work drama (taught in 2 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

y separately published work icon Traitors Stephen Sewell , 1979 (Manuscript version)x401389 Z1164836 1979 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

2009

y separately published work icon Flaws in the Glass : A Self-Portrait Patrick White , London : Jonathan Cape , 1981 Z443896 1981 single work autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'A self-portrait that is as brilliant original as White's fiction and drama.

'In this remarkable self-portrait Patrick White explains how on the very rare occasions when he re-reads a passage from one of his books, he recognises very little of the self he knows. This 'unknown' is the man interviewers and visiting students expect to find, but 'unable to produce him', he prefers to remain private, or as private as anyone who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature can ever be. In this book is the self Patrick White does recognise, the one he sees reflected in the glass.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage ed.).

y separately published work icon Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living The Cultivator Carrie Tiffany , 2003 Sydney : Picador , 2005 Z1080450 2003 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 6 units)

'It is 1934, the Great War is long over and the next is yet to come. It is a brief time of optimism and advancement.

'Billowing dust and information, the government 'Better Farming Train' slides through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia, bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land. The train is on a crusade to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic.

'Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle in the impoverished Mallee with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land.

'With failing crops and the threat of a new World War looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape.

'Erotically charged, and shot through with humour and a quiet wisdom, this haunting first novel evokes the Australian landscape in all its stark beauty and vividly captures the hope and disappointment of an era.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

y separately published work icon The Garden Book Brian Castro , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2005 Z1211305 2005 single work novel (taught in 5 units)
y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Praise Andrew McGahan , North Sydney : Allen and Unwin , 1992 Z563591 1992 single work novel (taught in 16 units) 'Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australian of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines.' (from back cover)
y separately published work icon Remembering Babylon David Malouf , London Milsons Point : Chatto and Windus Random House , 1993 Z452447 1993 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 48 units)

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

y separately published work icon Sixty Lights Gail Jones , London : Harvill Press , 2004 Z1136231 2004 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 15 units)

'Sixty Lights is the captivating chronicle of Lucy Strange, an independent girl growing up in the Victorian world. From her childhood in Australia through to her adolescence in England and Bombay and finally to London, Lucy is fascinated by light and by the new photographic technology. Her perception of the world is passionate and moving, revealed in a series of frozen images captured in the camera of her mind's eye showing her feelings about love, life and loss. In this confident, finely woven and intricate novel Jones has created an unforgettable character in Lucy; visionary, gifted and exuberant, she touches the lives of all who know her.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Monkey Grip Helen Garner , Melbourne : McPhee Gribble , 1977 Z115661 1977 single work novel (taught in 12 units)

Set in inner suburban 1970s Melbourne, Monkey Grip describes the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Single parent Nora falls in love with Javo, a heroin addict, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made.

y separately published work icon The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter , South Melbourne : Hyland House , 1994 Z528794 1994 single work novel crime (taught in 31 units)
y separately published work icon Prowler : A Novel Marion Campbell , South Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1999 Z249107 1999 single work novel (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon Working Hot : A Novel Mary Fallon , Melbourne : Sybylla Press , 1989 Z928435 1989 single work novel (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Golden Age Louis Nowra , s.l. : s.n. , 1980-1985 (Manuscript version)x401631 Z331846 1980 single work drama (taught in 9 units)
— Appears in: コシ. ゴールデン・エイジ 2006;

'In 1939, a lost tribe of Europeans was discovered in the Tasmanian wilderness. They were a band of outcasts who had escaped the torture of convict life, scratching out an existence at the forgotten edge of the island, alone for almost a century.

'Inspired by this true story, writer Louis Nowra (Cosi, Radiance) penned The Golden Age – an extraordinary play that blends historical fact, Australian folklore and poetic language to create a post-colonial myth for our times. Nowra’s outcasts have developed a culture and dialect all of their own, but their bodies are failing them and their very existence is in danger. Brought back into the fold of Australian society, what fate awaits this band of exiles?'

Source: Sydney Theatre Company (2016 revival).

y separately published work icon The Lost Dog Michelle De Kretser , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2007 Z1431148 2007 single work novel mystery (taught in 4 units)

'Tom Loxley is holed up in a remote bush shack trying to finish his book on Henry James when his beloved dog goes missing. What follows is a triumph of storytelling, as The Lost Dog loops back and forth in time to take the reader on a spellbinding journey into worlds far removed from the present tragedy.

'Set in present-day [2007] Australia and mid-twentieth century India, here is a haunting, layered work that brilliantly counterpoints new cityscapes and their inhabitants with the untamed, ancient continent beyond. With its atmosphere of menace and an acute sense of the unexplained in any story, it illuminates the collision of the wild and the civilised, modernity and the past, home and exile.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead , New York (City) : Simon and Schuster , 1940 Z462160 1940 single work novel (taught in 19 units)

'Set in Washington during the 1930s, Sam and Henny Pollit are a warring husband and wife. Their tempestuous marriage, aggravated by too little money, lies at the centre of Stead's satirical and brilliantly observed novel about the relations between husbands and wives, and parents and children.

'Sam, a scientist, uses words as weapons of attack and control on his children and is prone to illusions of power and influence that fail to extend beyond his family. His wife Henny, who hails from a wealthy Baltimore family, is disastrously impractical and enmeshed in her own fantasies of romance and vengeance. Much of the care of their six children is left to Louisa, Sam's 14-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Within this psychological battleground, Louisa must attempt to make a life of her own.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (MUP).

y separately published work icon Plains of Promise Alexis Wright , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z104794 1997 single work novel (taught in 23 units)

'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering. Mary's return reignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon The Savage Crows Robert Drewe , Sydney : Collins , 1976 Z443007 1976 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'This revelatory story of the most tragic, cruel, brave and misguided episode in Australia's history – the 'saving' of a unique race, the Tasmanian Aborigines – is seen through the eyes of an obsessive young present-day narrator. Breathtaking and visionary in its scope, The Savage Crows breaks new fictional ground in its affecting portrayal of the collision of worlds, generations and mythologies. From suburban apathy and cynicism blossoms a wild, foolhardy and beautiful hinterland of time and space.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Penguin 2001 ed.)

y separately published work icon Voss : A Novel Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)

y separately published work icon My Place Sally Morgan , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1987 Z384564 1987 single work autobiography (taught in 30 units)

'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.

Writing Poetry (ENG2WRP / ENG3WRP)
y separately published work icon The Best Australian Poems 2008 Peter Rose (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2008 Z1535132 2008 anthology poetry (taught in 1 units)
Aboriginal Australia (ANT2ABA / ANT3ABA)
y separately published work icon Past and Present : The Construction of Aboriginality Jeremy Beckett , Canberra : Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies , 1988 Z1575565 1988 selected work non-fiction (taught in 5 units)
y separately published work icon Aboriginal Australians : Black Response to White Dominance 1788-1980 Aboriginal Australians : A History Since 1788 Richard Broome , George Allen and Unwin , 1982 Z1575265 1982 single work (taught in 12 units)

'This book tells the history of Australia from the standpoint of the original Australians - those who lost most in our country's early colonial struggle for power. Surveying two centuries of Aboriginal-European encounters, it reveals what white Australia lost through unremitting colonial invasion and tells the story of Aboriginal survival through resistance and accommodation. It traces the continuing Aboriginal struggle to move from the margins of colonial society to a more central place in modern Australia.".

'Since its first appearance in 1982 and revision in 1994, Richard Broome's Aboriginal Australians has won a wide readership as a classic text on the history of race relations in Australia. Now fully updated to 2001, this new edition explains the land rights struggle since Mabo, the Hindmarsh Island affair, debates over the 'stolen generation', 'sorry' and reconciliation, and the recent experience of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Australians remains the only concise and up-to-date survey of Aboriginal history since 1788.' (Taken from book jacket of 2002 edition.)

y separately published work icon Why Weren't We Told? : A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History Henry Reynolds , Ringwood : Viking , 1999 Z1184786 1999 single work non-fiction (taught in 7 units)

Why Weren't We Told? is a frank account of Henry Reynolds' personal journal towards the realisation that he, like generations of Australians, grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past. From the author's unforgettable encounter in a North Queensland jail with injustice towards Aboriginal children, to his friendship with Eddie Mabo, to his shattering of the myths about our 'peaceful' history, this bestselling book will shock, move and intrigue. Why Weren't We Told? is crucial reading on the most important debate in Australia as we enter the twenty-first century.

y separately published work icon Blacklines : Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians Michèle Grossman (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2003 Z1072525 2003 anthology criticism essay (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Australian Contemporary Drama Dennis Carroll , Paddington : Currency Press , 1994 Z454830 1994 single work criticism (taught in 4 units)
y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon Australia Plays : New Australian Drama Katharine Brisbane (editor), London : Nick Hern Books , 1989 Z866193 1989 anthology drama (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Australian Drama : Perspectives Since 1955 Peter J. Holloway (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1987 Z466114 1987 anthology criticism (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Plays of the 70s [Volume 1] Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z34704 1998 anthology drama (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Room to Move Hannie Rayson , Montmorency : Yackandandah Playscripts , 1985 Z141803 1985 single work drama (taught in 2 units)
y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

y separately published work icon Traitors Stephen Sewell , 1979 (Manuscript version)x401389 Z1164836 1979 single work drama (taught in 4 units)
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