AustLit

'Australia's master storyteller Graham Seal brings to life the enigmas and puzzles behind famous unsolved crimes, long-held secrets, buried loot and strange phenomena from the bush and the city.

'Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical, and many continue to perplex us today - and will probably continue to do so tomorrow.

'More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish, and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing - somewhere.

'Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia. There are riddles of lost explorers, unexplained phenomena, and yarns of fish, frogs or pebbles falling from the sky. There are unsolved crimes and long-held secrets; hidden tunnels and wartime enigmas; and hair-raising tales from the bush and from the city.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Australians traditionally like their humour irreverent, crude and with very sharp teeth. Pioneering, settlement and battling fire, flood and drought have produced yarns of tough cocky farmers, shearers, bush workers, swaggies and dreadful cooks. Much of this humour relates to the resilience and fortitude necessary to endure the realities of rural life. Australians took this sensibility with them to war and to work in the cities, and the tradition continues today. Graham Seal has been gathering traditional stories from country towns and the outback for decades, and here he compiles the very funniest stories he has encountered.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The tradition of yarns from the bush goes back to the earliest days in Australia. Colourful rural characters and dramatic incidents parade through our history and folklore, entertaining and appalling us in equal measure. Graham Seal has gathered classic and little-known stories from the time when most Australians lived outside the cities, and communication was by dirt track or boat. There's the time when farmers used their Ferguson tractors to save a town from floodwaters; when soldiers took on mobs of emus devastating the wheat crop; the Lady Bushranger who lived rough in a cave; Bob the railway dog who hitched rides on trains for years; and the many dubious strategies devised over the years against the pesky bush fly. True or more than a little exaggerated, these stories reflect the distinctive way of life of rural and outback folk which continues even today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Graham Seal takes us back to Australia's ignominious beginnings, when a hungry child could be transported to the other side of the globe for stealing a loaf of bread. It was a time when men were flogged till they bled for a minor misdemeanour, teams in iron chains carved roads through sandstone cliffs with hand picks, and wives were selected from a line up at the Female Factory. From the notorious prison regimes at Norfolk Island, Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour came chilling accounts of cruelty, murder and even cannibalism. With a cast of colourful characters from around the country: the real Artful Dodger, intrepid bushrangers like Martin Cash and Moondyne Joe, and the legendary nurse Margaret Catchpole, Great Convict Stories offers a fascinating insight into life in Australia's first decades.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'From one of our master storytellers, author of the bestselling Great Australian Stories, comes another collection of yarns, tall tales, bush legends and colourful characters. Taking us from the deep outback to the glistening sea, they go to the heart of what makes us distinctively Australian.

'Yarns, legends, myths, jokes and anecdotes are our national lifeblood. The home-grown and borrowed tales, told and re-told over generations, offer an insight into the larger national story of which every Australian has a part.

'Was Breaker Morant the Gatton murderer? What happened to Sniffling Jimmy and Black Mary? We revisit some of the most colourful characters in Australia's past, and the stories that have grown around them. We go looking for the real illywhacker and find out what happened after the execution of our most famous outlaw, Ned Kelly.

'It takes a certain character to make a living in the Australian bush. In the most difficult situations, laughter often comes to the rescue. Here are pioneers and battlers, convicts and settler's children, and a land that tests them with fire, flood and drought, all in stories resonant with Australia's distinctive wry humour. Dip into Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories for a taste of Australia's rich history and traditions.' (Publication summary)

The First World War had a major presence on the Australian stage, particularly in vaudeville theatre, before and after 1918; and following the Armistice, many variety shows were performed by diggers themselves.

The extent of their popularity surprised historians, who have been investigating the phenomenon since a bequest to the Melbourne Arts Centre in 2001 brought to light a collection of original comedy scripts from one of the leading companies, Pat Hanna's Famous Diggers.

Vaudeville was performed to large audiences right across Australia, and the persistence of its war-related material throws an intriguing light on community response to the war. There were jokes about the Kaiser, the officers, the mud and the rain, as well as challenging portrayals of ex-servicemen's difficulties in adapting to civilian life. The theatrical material joins the growing knowledge of soldiers' often ironic responses in song and verse to the experiences of war.

On the battlefront, and back in the music halls and theatres in Australia, humour and satire emerged as a powerful tool for both soldiers and civilians who had experienced one of longest and most violent conflicts in modern history, and its enduring consequences.

'It's much more fun to say "What's the John Dory?" instead of "What's the story?" and "Give me a Captain Cook" instead of "Give me a look", and wonderfully cheeky to remark "Who made the apple tart?" instead of "Who made a fart?"

'But there is also a darker side to rhyming slang - it can be used like a secret code (perhaps that's why criminals have always been fond of it!). Since colonial days, Australians have used rhyming slang with great style. And as the addition of Britney Spears (beers) goes to show, rhyming slang is still very much alive.

'In Dog's Eye and Dead Horse, Graham Seal shares his long-held fascination with this aspect of everyday language.' (From the publisher's website.)

'The soldiers of the First AIF - who would eventually become known as "diggers" - constructed a self-consciously "Australian" folk culture. It was a culture that had significance for those who created it and which also projected a particular representation of Australian-ness to "others", particularly the British. Digger folk culture was created in the hothouse of the First AIF with elements derived from the bush and larrikin traditions together with the unprecedented experiences of the war itself. Initially an oral culture, it quickly moved into the more formal media of the trench newspaper and soldier journals [...]. Digger culture also formed the basis of the institutionalised Anzac tradition. Undergoing various transformations, the culture of the digger and the tradition of Anzac have remained a complex and powerful mythology at the heart of Australian identity, continuing to influence the ways Australians understand themselves as a nation and how they project that understanding to the rest of the world' (189-190). The paper examines the origins of digger culture from 1915 and traces its development and continuing impact.