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This lecture is in some ways the ‘lost’ chapter of The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (2009), one eventually not written because the projected author could find not enough literary material even in that vast Pacific Ocean, or perhaps found – as mariners have – only far separated specks in that ocean. Yet Australian literature about the nation’s Pacific littoral and the islands within the ocean and the ocean itself is varied, considerable, and often eccentric. Our greatest drinking song is Barry Humphries’s ‘The Old Pacific Sea’. The Japs and the jungle are the hallmarks of fiction, poetry and reportage of the Pacific War of 1942-5. New Guinea has attracted such writers as James McAuley, Peter Ryan, Trevor Shearston, Randolph Stow and Drusilla Modjeska. The short stories of Louis Becke are the most extensive and iconoclastic writing about the Pacific by any Australian. Yet the literature of the Pacific littoral seems thinner than that of the Indian Ocean. The map on the title page of Rolf Boldrewood’s A Modern Buccaneer (1894) shows those afore-mentioned specks in a vast expanse of water. What aesthetic challenges have Pacific writing posed and how have they been met? Have the waters of the Pacific satisfied Australians as a near offshore playground but defeated wider efforts of the imagination? ' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- A Vision of Ceremony : Poems 1956 selected work poetry
- Mr J W Lewin : Painter & Naturalist 2012 single work biography
- By Reef and Palm 1894 selected work short story
- The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia 1987 single work criticism biography bibliography
- Bread and Wine : Selected Prose 1970 selected work prose
- All Good Things 2013 single work autobiography
- For Love Alone 1944 single work novel
- A Modern Buccaneer 1894 single work novel
- The Old Pacific Sea (for Martin Sharp) 1991 single work poetry
- Pacific Region,
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cPapua New Guinea,cPacific Region,