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Australian Stories (ENL1001)
Semester 2 / 2011

Texts

form y separately published work icon Bush Mechanics David Batty , Francis Jupurrula Kelly , ( dir. David Batty ) Lindfield Yuendumu Australia : Film Australia Warlpiri Media Association ABC Television , 1998 Z1662471 1998 series - publisher film/TV humour (taught in 4 units)

'This off-beat series follows the exploits of the Bush Mechanics, a group of engaging Aboriginal characters, as they travel through central Australia.

'In each episode, the Bush Mechanics from the remote Warlpiri community of Yuendumu are presented with a new set of challenges - catching a car thief, getting a nephew out of jail, racing to an outback rock concert and travelling thousands of miles to gather pearl shells for a rainmaking ceremony. As they travel through the desert in their clapped-out vehicles, they solve multiple car problems with wacky and inventive bush repair techniques.'

Source: ABC TV Documentaries (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s359476.htm). (Sighted: 12/10/2012)

y separately published work icon Turning the Century : Writing of the 1890s Christopher Lee (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1999 Z397740 1999 anthology short story poetry extract prose (taught in 12 units) The works in this selection, all composed or published between 1885 and 1905, 'represent the way in which literary forms were used to respond to some of the important social, cultural and political preoccupations' of Australia during this period (Note on the Text, ix). The work is divided into the following six sections, each with a prefatory Editor's Note; Histories and Futures; Home and Away; Love and Other Catastrophes; Work and Play; Civilisation and its Discontents: Art and Society. There is also a List of Sources, pp. 374-381, and a bibliography, pp. 382-390.
form y separately published work icon Crocodile Dundee Paul Hogan , Ken Shadie , John Cornell , ( dir. Peter Faiman ) 1985 Sydney : Rimfire Films , 1986 Z1612282 1985 single work film/TV (taught in 6 units)

Mick 'Crocodile' Dundee runs an outback adventure business with his trusted friend and self-proclaimed mentor Walter Reilly. When he survives a crocodile attack, the news travels well beyond the Northern Territory, and a glamorous New York journalist, Sue Charlton, arrives to interview him. He invites her to come with him to the place where he was attacked. When Sue herself is attacked by a croc, Mick saves her. This leads to an invitation for Mick to visit his first ever city: New York City. Mick finds the culture and life in New York City a lot different than his home.

y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , Melbourne : Australasian Book Society , 1959 Z813008 1959 single work novel (taught in 7 units) A classic novel about urban working-class life in 1950s Australia, combining the shifting narrative viewpoint pioneered by Modernism with a relentless realist mode. The book abounds with portraits of working women, married and unmarried, middle-aged and young, zestful and tired. These varied existences form the collective hero of the novel whose social message has lost nothing of its urgency. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Home Larissa Behrendt , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2004 Z1113719 2004 single work novel (taught in 10 units)

'A story of homecoming, this absorbing novel opens with a young, city-based lawyer setting out on her first visit to ancestral country. Candice arrives at "the place where the rivers meet", the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted. As Garibooli takes up the story of Candice's Aboriginal family, the twentieth century falls away.

Garibooli, renamed Elizabeth, is sent to work as a housemaid, but marriage soon offers escape from the terror of the master's night-time visits. Her displacement carries into the lives of her seven children - their stories witness to the impact of orphanage life and the consequences of having a dark skin in post-war Australia. Vividly rekindled, the lives of her family point the direction home for Candice.

Home is a ... novel from an author who understands both the capacity of language to suppress and the restorative potency of stories that bridge past and present.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

Description

This course serves as an introduction to Australian stories and the role they play in the formation of cultural identities. It examines the heterogeneity of Australian culture through its stories and will direct particular attention to the way in which narrative reimagines social, cultural and political values.

Assessment

Research essay (1000 words) - 20%

Research essay (2000 words) - 40%

Discussion group posting - 10%

Examination (2hrs) - 30%

Other Details

Offered in: 2010, 2009
Current Campus: Toowoomba, External
Levels: Undergraduate
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