AustLit
Latest Issues
Contents
-
When Dawn Broke,
single work
short story
(p. 6)A squatter near Dubbo has drawn money from the bank for a stock sale, and expects his brother at the station, so he goes home without getting his rifle fixed, despite news that the Kelly gang is approaching. In the night someone bangs on his door and he thinks the Kellys are using their usual ruse to get inside. At dawn he discovers the attacker asleep outside, the local ostler who promised to bring his rifle out next day.
-
The Bullocky's Gratitude,
single work
short story
crime
humour
(p. 6)A very strong Italian cane farmer makes a friend of the local Irish constable after being knocked out but not charged while on a drunken rampage. After a language misunderstanding over someone 'left holding the baby,' he corners and beats up a suspected local smuggler to discover tins of opium on him. But the constable cannot prove it in court and the smuggler escapes.Note: In Column: Tales of Illicit Trading
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Has serialised
-
Bett : A Tale Of Old Breakfast Creek,
single work
novel
romance
An independent spirited girl with a mean mother and idle father is engaged to an easy-going but illiterate Breakfast Creek fisherman when she decides to take a station job to pay for her trousseau. While she is away her mother and less good-looking sister trick the fisherman into marrying the sister, while Bett herself meets a handsome Irish migrant. Complications with an aboriginal horse-tailer and his wife lead to a forced marriage, the aboriginal wife's murder, Pat's departure to make his fortune on the Gympie goldfield, and his detainment for four years with the horse-tailer's tribe. Meanwhile Bett returns with her daughter to Brisbane, where she and the fisherman yearn for each other until he is murdered by his partner during a flood. Pat leaves the tribe, makes his fortune at Gympie, and reaches Brisbane, despite the best efforts of Bett's mother, in time to help her save the fisherman's son from the murderous partner, buy a dairy farm near her brother, and settle down for life.
