AustLit

Set in the 1940s, Had We But World Enough dramatises the tension that arises in a country town over a teacher's decision to cast an Aboriginal girl as the Virgin Mary in a locally-written school nativity play. The casting is approved by the playwright, a journalist for the town's paper, and also a returned soldier who fought alongside Aboriginal servicemen. During the course of the narrative others find themselves being forced into taking sides, however. This leads to consequences that impact on the characters in different ways - affecting careers, relationships, social standing or conscience.

The action of the play tales place within the lounge room of the house owned by Mrs Shiels. The house itself is situated in a 'fair-sized country town somewhere in New South Wales' ('Had We But World Enough,' p.1).

Characters

MRS. S
DAVID
PHYLLIS
NICK
NANCY
CHALMERS
MRS. W
WHALEN
LILY
 

A collection of reproduced items from the Fryer Library's John Forbes archive, curated and commented on by 2017 Fryer Fellow, Dr Duncan Hose.

'Why has John Forbes remained such a charismatic figure in Australian poetry? We have a thesis. Forbes was going to become a priest: was within the sights of the Jesuits as being an exceptional candidate, as having the calling. Something happened to him in the plum of his youth, a morphing of desire, where he was overtaken by poetry as a more desirable material practice and metaphysical application. Forbes’s practice of poetry retains some of the essential drives of his Catholic faith: absolute devotion, ritual, self-sacrifice, doubt, a faith in sacraments and the commitment to the devotional community, transmitting something of the sacred, only this new application I will describe as having turned from a Catholic to a Pagan metaphysics, and the poems he produces as Pagan Sermons which demand some sort of follow through for those that come after.'

Source: Introduction.

This collection of autobiographical short stories captures the experience of growing up in Australia as an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person. The authors range in age from young adults to older women and men but common to all of their experience is resilience and respect. The stories are published by BlackWords as a result of an overwhelming volume of stories submitted to Black Inc. for consideration in a print collection entitled Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Professor Anita Heiss.

'Surfing is a beautiful, romantic and mostly pointless pursuit: tanned bodies riding walls of water, waves blue and glittering, grey and heaving, green and wild, sunlight diffusing through the feathering peaks, people triumphantly exiting watery tubes or falling laughing into foam. The modern version of standup surfing that emerged from Hawai’i has been popular in Australia since the early 20^th century and has become an ideal of Australian coastal life and culture. Surfers themselves have come to be symbols of contemporary health and vitality for young and old, their tanned, fit bodies defining ideas of freedom, youth, play and leisure. But what does it all mean?' 

This project follows the various threads of surfing that weave through Australian literature that deepen our understanding of how surfing has shaped our relationships to beaches, coastlines and oceans, and how surfing has contributed to a sense of being Australian. 

'Writing Disability in Australia aggregates writing on disability in AustLit into a searchable index, with the aim of drawing attention to the ways in which Australian writers have represented disability. It highlights the significant and imaginative achievements of writers with disability, the structures and assumptions of ableism, the resourcefulness with which people with disability navigate their everyday lives, and the ways in which disability lends itself to creativity, lateral thinking, and resilience.

'Writing Disability in Australia promotes the social model of disability, which sees disability as a condition created by barriers in culture and environment. It does not perceive disability as something to be ‘fixed’; rather, it emphasises the removal of these barriers so that people with disability can participate in society on an equal basis.'

Source: Project website.

'Setting her action in a large hospital, Miss Blewett has undertaken no simple task in dealing with nursing from both its practical and psychological aspects, complicated in two cases by individual emotional strains. The play covers the hours of one hectic night in the hospital, in which the emotional preoccupations of several of the staff intrude on their professional duties' ('Australian Play' Argus 10 March 1941, 6).

Characters

SISTER MURPHY of the day staff at St. Agnes’

PROBATIONER

SISTER RANKIN (FRANCES)

NURSE RUTH SINCLAIR 3^rd Year

NURSE JEAN SPARROW 1^st Year

NURSE WILLIAMS 1^st Year

NURSE PATSY CURTIN Junior

NURSE SMITH

NURSE ROBERTS

RUSSEL KEANE A Patient

DR. ANGUS MACREADY Resident Doctor at the Hospital

MRS. LEILA CLAYTON A patient

THE MATRON

DR. RICHARD CLAYTON

An illustrated introduction to AustLit's records for Australian pulp westerns.

Con sordini means "with the mutes". A mute is a device fitted to a musical instrument to alter the sound produced: by affecting the timbre (or "tone"), reducing the volume, or most commonly both. 

Beatrice Carford is spending the evening with her family and friends rehearsing a musical performance for the upcoming show week concert. The rehearsal is interrupted, however, when her niece June declares that she longs to leave their provincial town and see the world, just like her older cousin Harriet. The group begin to reminisce about their childhood memories of Harriet, who has become a successful and worldly travel writer. Suddenly, Harriet herself arrives at the house to pay a quick visit in between flights. She doesn't have much time to spend with her old friends, but it might be just enough to uncover a long-concealed secret that could turn Beatrice's life upside down. 

Charles and Miranda Harcourt are entertaining Miranda's sister and her husband, Felicity and Walter Cockburn. Walter has great news—he's secured a new job in Africa. Felicity is all too eager to move. Charles is considered a shoo-in for Walter's old position at the company. The four open a special bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion. Charles' daughter, Susan, is expected to join them for dinner. However, an unexpected guest also arrives. Andrew Ferris is an old friend of Miranda and Felicity, who disappeared without explanation during the war. HIs sudden reappearance is met with a mixture of warm welcome and cold hostility from the sisters. Miranda is thrilled to see her old friend, but Felicity is determined to make him feel unwelcome. The tension rises as the party spends more time together. Suspicions are aroused, relationships formed, arguments and accusations fly, and ultimately, a long-hidden secret threatens to disrupt them all. 

Characters                        

CHARLES HARCOURT A City Business man (about 45)

MIRANDA HARCOURT His wife (late 30's)

FELICITY COCKBURN Miranda's sister (33)

SIR WALTER COCKBURN Felicity's husband, also in the City (about 47)

ANDREW FERRIS An Australian: ex R.A.A.F.  (35)

SUSAN HARCOURT Daughter of Charles by a former marriage. (22)

ANTHONY HARCOURT Adopted son of Miranda and Charles Aged 12

MRS. HUGHES A neighbour (Fiftyish)

Syliva and Henry Baring are expected to attend an evening party together. When Henry refuses to go at the last minute, Sylvia must yet again attend a social event alone. Feeling upset, she accuses her husband of loving his work and the law more than he loves her. Her complaint is interrupted by the appearance of a local spinster, Sarah Seedon. She claims to have pressing information about a case Henry is currently working on, but her evidence is laughable. She says that she has taken an astral journey, and witnessed a hit-and-run, insisting that the man on trial is not guilty. Henry at first dismisses her, but further revelations convince him that there might be something to her story. Sylvia, meanwhile, lingers in the background, still pondering the question of just how much her husband cares for her. 

Characters

HENRY BARING Crown Prosecutor  

SYLVIA BARING His Wife

DR. ALEX CURTIS 

MADGE CURTIS His Wife  

SARAH SEEDON A middle-aged spinster

Jean Marie Roche dreams of being an artist, but she is unsure of her talent. Not convinced by the enthusiastic admiration of her fiancé and parents, she seeks out the opinion of reputable local artist, Peter Raid. The play centres around this encounter. Jean Marie learns that being an artist would mean separation from her fiancé—an unbearable ultimatum her mother knows all too well. Peter's severity evokes a hidden anger in the well-mannered girl—a passion with equal potential to end her dream, or reveal an unexpected opportunity. 

Characters

JEAN MARIE ROCHE Just twenty-two. She is a rather pretty girl who looks and is capable. She is sure of herself and of

ROB DRURY Jean Marie's fiancé. Rob is in his late twenties, is moody and sensitive. Both Rob and Jean Marie are in tennis clothes.

MR.  ROCHE    

MRS. ROCHE  Having produced Jean Marie, they rest on their laurels. They are ordinary small-town business people.

DR. KINCAID An ordinary small-town general practitioner. Probably the most popular man in the town. He is snort and tubby and he feels the heat.

PETER RAID A middle-aged artist who wears good clothes carelessly and has a ravaged, intense face.

Alleyne Manning has won the lottery. After decades of hard office work, she can finally afford a tasteful apartment filled with furnishings, which are as dear to her as her new financial security. She plans to spend her days relaxing, playing bridge, and indulging in her comfortable life. However, she is already beginning to feel a little bored. Alleyne’s curt friends barely have a chance to criticise her situation before Lise Farra, an English ballerina, appears on Alleyne’s sundeck—stranded and seeking a way home.

The two fall immediately into sympathy with one another, and many months pass while they enjoy time together. Their relationship is marked by ongoing arguments—Lise is intense and tenacious, and often dissatisfied. Alleyne believes women ought to find companionship in men, and urges Lise to follow suit. Throughout the ensuing drama the two women find themselves drawn back to one another, time after time. Alleyne must eventually decide between the life and the man she had hoped for, and the gripping appeal of a life with Lise.

Characters

ALLEYNE MANNING An unmarried woman of 45

ISABEL BROWN

CONNIE PERCEVAL Friends of Alleyne’s and about the same age

ROBERT PERCEVAL Connie’s husband

Members of a touring European ballet company:

LISE FARRA Aged 18

GABRIEL MAURICE 30

NATASHA

VERA OBELESKA

SERGE Vera's husband

"A very different play of Dorothy Blewett's was "It Has Happened Before", written for the ABC's verse play competition. It is now apparent that this competition has brought forth results eminently worthwhile. It has indeed contributed considerable dramatic and poetic richness to the stock of Australian play literature. Dorothy Blewett's radio play tells with a degree of adult intellectuality and yet sensitive feeling the love story of a German Jew scientist and an Australian girl in Europe. The scientist has been persecuted and exiled by Hitler; he returns to Germany to save an even more distinguished scientific worker and willingly gives his life.

Beginning with apparent uncertainty, as Lenora unreservedly tells of her experiences to a women's club in Australia, the story and verse gather strength and dramatic momentum until the narrative becomes genuinely moving. The final plea for distinguished refugees, Jewish though they be, is truly compassionate. There is scalding satire in the closing return to the women's club where prejudice and intolerance appear as strongly, even as crudely, as in Germany. Lenora tells that a great foreign thinker has suicided in Australia for lack of a welcome. That this news falls on deaf ears at the women's meeting cannot but make its challenge to the responsible listener. For undoubtedly this play mirrors fact. There are numbers of European professional men of highest intellectual calibre in Australia today, debarred from anything but labouring work.It is ordinarily decent or sensible to treat them thus, is how one's on thought runs on, though Miss Blewett's play mainly pleads that Jews should be regarded as being of the same common flesh and blood as ourselves."

(Source: 'Drama in Sydney, The Australian Quarterly, September, 1943.)

Characters

First Part – At the Meeting 

THE SECRETARY She is middle-aged, fluttery and spinsterish, but with an unexpected obstinacy in her voice.

MISS BLACK Middle-aged. Inclined to be carping.

THE PRESIDENT Efficient, well-spoken – a typical president.

LADY WITH THE EAR TRUMPET She is elderly, speaks in the flat high-pitched tone of the deaf.

LENORA VALENTINE In her early thirties. Her voice is clear and colourful.

MRS. DEAN Very ordinary.

Second Part – At Oxford 

LANSELL Just twenty, cultured, consciously un-Oxford.

LENORA                                                        

MARIANNA About twenty, voice about two tones higher than Lenora’s; very English.

LEON SCHONENBERG His voice is deep and full, with plenty of overtone. He is in his late thirties. He has a very slight accent.

ANOTHER MAN

ANOTHER GIRL

Third Part – In London 

LENORA

LEON

Fourth Part – In Germany 

KURT MARTIN Very deep, tired voice. Distinct accent.

ELSA MARTIN About fifty. Also has a distinct accent.

LENORA

LEON

Fifth Part – At the Meeting again 

The same persons as in the first part.

A research project established by Dr Willa McDonald with Dr Bunty Avieson and Dr Kerrie Davies for Macquarie University.

This is the first stage of a larger study that aims to define Australian narrative journalism and trace its history from 1788 to today. The term ‘narrative journalism’ (sometimes called ‘literary journalism) has come to be associated with factual reporting that uses scenes, characterisation, dialogue, point of view, setting and other literary techniques usually connected with imaginative storytelling. While legacy media outlets are shrinking around the world, narrative journalism can be found in book form, in prestige Australian print publications and on websites that provide long-form, in-depth content.

Originally published on a pilot Wordpress site, the project was moved to AustLit and expanded by Dr Willa McDonald in 2017-2018.

Set in the Post Office of the fictional town of Koorora a few years after the end of World War II. A desert settlement of some 67 people that exists mainly to support the building of the Trans-Australian Railway line (which crossed the Nullarbor Plain from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta), Koorora typifies the railway workers' joke that their trains 'stop at nothing.' The title is a reference to the local belief that birds, apart from the occasional crow, won't fly over or settle in Koorora because it too far from water.

Heinrich (Heine) Schafer is the town's new railway mechanic. He is also a new Australian - a German Jew who spent much of the war imprisoned by the Nazis. His arrival in the town creates new tensions - inflaming both anti-German and anti-semetic hatred among some locals and a romantic passion with the wife of Rick O'Hara, the locomotive engineer who befriends him. Nereai reminds Heine of his dead wife. Rick, a free-thinking socialist and unionist, is already questioning his worth as a husband to the much younger Nereai, and believes in his wife's right to determining her own choices. Their decision is not, however, left to them alone. The tensions between townsfolk over the impacts of Heine's presence are a vehicle for questioning and transforming the status quo in families and marriages. The play describes some of the worst traits of racist and xenophobic Australian society of the time.

The scenes, as determined in the manuscript from the Hanger Collection, in the Fryer Library at The University of Queensland, are:

Act 1

Scene 1: Post Office in the settlement of Koorora, Nullarbor Desert, South Australia.

Scene 2: One month later

Act 2

Scene 1: One month later

Scene 2: One month later

The version published in Plays of the 50s [Volume One] includes a third act, the scenes of which are:

Act 3

Scene 1: The following morning

Scene 2: The same morning

Characters

PEG 32, postmaster's wife and Nereia's sister

RICK 40

HEINRICH 34

MAJOR HARRY ROBINSON postmaster, and former 'Kipling soldier'

BARTLEY 50, owner of the general store and a 'miserable whining tyrant' 

NEREIA 22 

JUMBO TOLLIS 55, laconic, easy, philosophic - a Lawson bushman

CLIFFIE ROYCE 20, a big hansome lout

PETER BARTLEY 18, under his father's thumb