Landscape, nationalism and politics in Australian children's

literature

Presented at Landscape and Heritage - One Day Conference

3rd November 2008

2.15 - 2.35pm

Dr Stephen Bigger and Dr Robyn Cox

Period 1 – Accounts of life (1788-1880)

Captain Tench (1789): A Narrative of an Expedition to Botany Bay, & A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, London, 2

volumes.

Detail from Botany Bay; Sirius & Convoy going in ... 21 January 1788.from 'A Voyage to New South Wales' by William Bradley, December 1786 - May 1792, Safe 1/14

Period 2 – Anthropological collectors (1880-1930)

Radcliffe-Brown’s, A.R. (1926) The Rainbow-Serpent Myth of Australia.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, v56.

BASEDOW, Herbert THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL: Adelaide, F W Preece, 1925 1st Edition. 422pp.

Period 3 – The Wars and Nationalism

Fenner, C., (1933) Bunyips and Billabongs. An Australian Out of Doors. Sydney: Augus and Robertson.

Period 4 – Aboriginal Land Rights

Books written between 1978 and 1987 by Percy Trezise and Dick Roughsey

1. The Rainbow Serpent

2. The Quinkins

3. Banana bird and the snake men

4. Turramulli the Giant Quinkin

5. The Magic Firesticks

6. Gidja

7. Ngalculli - The Red Kangaroo

8. The Flying Fox Warriors

9. The Owl People

Mowaljarlai, David (1980) When the Snake Bites the Sun: An Aboriginal Story, Sydney: Scholastics

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1981), Father Sky and Mother Earth. Melbourne: John Wiley & Sons.

Conclusion

As he looked he said: “Every place you walk, you have to have a story. So you know where you come from; and know where you are; and see where you are going.”

Brody, H (2003) 'You have to have a story' - Aboriginal memory and opportunity. From http://www.opendemocracy.net/ecology/article_1098.jsp accessed 1st November 2008