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'The ‘gentlemen of the flashing blade’ laboured in an occupation that no longer exists in Australia: canecutting. It was a hard job done by hard men, and its iconic figure – the canecutter – survives as a Queensland legend, so extensively romanticized in the popular culture of the time as to constitute a subgenre characterized by subject matter and motifs particular to the pre-mechanization sugar country culture. Yet, it may seem like the only canecutters immortalized in the arts are Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’s Roo and Barney. To show the breadth and diversity of this subgenre, and the legend of the canecutter and sugar country culture, this article reviews a selection of novels, memoirs, plays, short stories, cartoons, verse, song, film, television, radio and children’s books. These works address the racial, cultural and industrial politics of the sugar industry and its influence on the economic and social development of Queensland. The parts played by the nineteenth-century communities of indentured South Sea Islanders and the European immigrants who followed are represented along with those of the itinerant Anglos. These works depict, and celebrate, a colourful, often brutal, part of Queensland’s past and an Australian icon comparable with the swaggie or the shearer.' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1955 single work drama
- Cindie : A Chronicle of the Canefields 1949 single work novel
- Brown Sugar 1974 single work novel
- Blackbird 1996 single work novel
- The Sugar Slaves : A Novel of the Queensland Kanakas 2002 single work novel
- Sugar Heaven 1936 single work novel
- Paradise Flow 1938 single work novel
- The Cruel Field 1962 single work novel
- Cane! 1967 single work novel
- Fields of Fire 1987 series - publisher film/TV
- Canecutter 2012 single work novel