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Set during the gold rush days, The Promised Land focuses on the partnership of missionary-protector Sir George Augustus and the vampiress Amelia, and their bid to control colonial value - gold and blood respectively. Having returned to the Great South Land with his young wife, Lady Lucy, Augustus intends establishing a mission to educate and Christianise the native people. When he hears that gold has been found on the land, his missionary zeal increases. Accompanied by the mysterious white woman, Amelia Fraser, and a troop of native police, he sets out on an expedition to the diggings. As Sir George journeys into what he hopes is a golden future, his past begins to creep up on him, and those he thought were dead return to confront him.' Meanwhile, Amelia, with voracious (sexual) appetite and relish, preys on all continental human life, no matter what social class, gender, race or creed.
Notes
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Book 4 of the Master of the Ghost Dreaming series and the final story in what is sometimes referred to as Mudrooroo's vampire trilogy (also comprising The Undying and Underground).
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Dedication: In memory of Heiner Muller (1929-1996). To keep writing as long as possible, without hope or despair.
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Epigraph: ''Allegorical', she said, her voice raw, sounding as if she smoked and drank heavily, awaiting exit from the womb. 'Truth bedecked in Halloween drag'.' - Jack Womack
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Writing Indigenous Vampires : Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: M/C Journal , August vol. 17 no. 4 2014; 'The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation.' (Introduction) -
Transnational Impulses as Simulation in Colin Johnson’s (Mudrooroo’s) Fiction
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 5 no. 2 2013; -
Spectres of Mudrooroo: A Suspended Corpo-Reality That 'Matters'
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: European Journal of English Studies , April vol. 15 no. 1 2011; (p. 45-56) -
Introduction : Resistance to the Un-Australian
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 1-10) 'The Australian mind seems to be obsessed with the invocation of its 'un-national' apart from newspaper headlines, advertisements on television, or in signs tacked to lamp-posts in suburban Sydney, even the Macquarie Dictionary shows a preoccupation with the 'un-Australian'. Having introduced the lemma only as recently as 2001 in their Federation edition, the lexicographers already updated it in the subsequent 2005 edition by adding a fourth entry to account for the increased use of the word in the popular domain:' violating a pattern of conduct, behaviour, etc., which, it is implied by the user of the term, is one embraced by Australians'. Despite this zeal for determining the' un-national', little attention has been paid to its positive counterpart, thus making it easier to exclude people on grounds of their 'un-Australianness' than to welcome a national diversity.' (Author's introduction) -
Bats and Crows : Ambiguity as Journey in Mudrooroo/Johnson's Master of the Ghost Dreaming Series
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journeying and Journalling : Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing 2010; (p. 175-188) 'Clare Archer-Lean focuses 'on the textual strategies of journey and impermanence. These can be understood through theoretical notions of trickster, a deliberately incoherent and slippery figure/story, alongside the symbolic ramification of water, representing movement and fluidity, to read Johnson's use of the journey motif. The journey motif in these works can be expanded to included the intra-textual journeys Johnson's writing carries out between its own past and present forms and how this self-referentiality constructs a challenge to the notion of a fixed and stable journal and record of any journey.' (175)
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Paperbacks
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 1 July 2000; (p. 10)
— Review of The Promised Land 2000 single work novel -
Perverse Pursuits
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 224 2000; (p. 42-43)
— Review of The Promised Land 2000 single work novel -
Terror as White Female in Mudrooroo's Vampire Trilogy
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 41 no. 2 2006; (p. 121-138) 'The article reads the trilogy mainly through Barbara Creed's theorization of the monstrous feminine and examines the ways in which Mudrooroo presents his post-conquest female vampire as castrating and all-consuming. It also argues that it is possible to see Mudrooroo's female monster as a textual representation of the legendary soulless mother who would devour her own son to feed her sense of self and reality - with all the connotations of the author's descredited claim to Aboriginal identity this implies.' -
Vampiric Decolonization : Fanon, 'Terrorism,' and Mudrooroo's Vampire Trilogy
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Whiteness : A Critical Reader on Race and Empire 2005; (p. 103-118) -
Bats and Crows : Ambiguity as Journey in Mudrooroo/Johnson's Master of the Ghost Dreaming Series
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journeying and Journalling : Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing 2010; (p. 175-188) 'Clare Archer-Lean focuses 'on the textual strategies of journey and impermanence. These can be understood through theoretical notions of trickster, a deliberately incoherent and slippery figure/story, alongside the symbolic ramification of water, representing movement and fluidity, to read Johnson's use of the journey motif. The journey motif in these works can be expanded to included the intra-textual journeys Johnson's writing carries out between its own past and present forms and how this self-referentiality constructs a challenge to the notion of a fixed and stable journal and record of any journey.' (175)
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Spectres of Mudrooroo: A Suspended Corpo-Reality That 'Matters'
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: European Journal of English Studies , April vol. 15 no. 1 2011; (p. 45-56) -
Introduction : Resistance to the Un-Australian
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 1-10) 'The Australian mind seems to be obsessed with the invocation of its 'un-national' apart from newspaper headlines, advertisements on television, or in signs tacked to lamp-posts in suburban Sydney, even the Macquarie Dictionary shows a preoccupation with the 'un-Australian'. Having introduced the lemma only as recently as 2001 in their Federation edition, the lexicographers already updated it in the subsequent 2005 edition by adding a fourth entry to account for the increased use of the word in the popular domain:' violating a pattern of conduct, behaviour, etc., which, it is implied by the user of the term, is one embraced by Australians'. Despite this zeal for determining the' un-national', little attention has been paid to its positive counterpart, thus making it easier to exclude people on grounds of their 'un-Australianness' than to welcome a national diversity.' (Author's introduction)
- 1850s