AustLit

'Fantasy narratives for young people that represented Australia’s history, prior to, and after white settlement, initially depicted alternative pasts in which the land was populated by familiar European and British magical beings such as fairies and giants. Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow (1980) marked the beginning of Australian children’s fantasy that sought to depict the country’s urban colonial history and reconcile its development into a modern nation. The time-slip novel, in which 14-year-old protagonist Abigail Kirk unwittingly travels from Sydney in the late-1970s to 1873, nevertheless engages in a similar process of importing British mythology to fill a presumed cultural vacancy in which First Nations people are erased. In Park’s novel, the folklore of the Orkney Islands, from which the family she encounters in the past has emigrated, provides the explanation for Abigail’s time travel and her place in contemporary Australia. Abigail’s time travel experience uncovers direct genealogical links between contemporary Australians and colonial settlers and the supernatural connections between Abigail and the colonial family counteract the absence of local mythical traditions.'  (Publication abstract)

This Exhibition is a collection of extensive teaching resources for classic Australian children's texts. The resources are aimed at upper primary school and lower high school teachers. The collection forms part of Anthony Shaw's Learning with Literature program.

'Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow (1980) is a fantastical, time-travel novel that is also fascinated with lived history. It is especially interested in the question of how, that is through what means and forms, our past is remembered and mediated. Do we remember the past through what is recorded in official archives and taught on school and university curricula? Or are there other ways of accessing what took place before our own time? It is a children’s nursery rhyme and a discarded piece of old cloth that enable the transportation of Playing Beatie Bow‘s Abigail Kirk back to Sydney’s The Rocks in 1873, suggesting that popular song and ephemeral objects can open historical horizons and be the catalyst for reconstructing meaningful stories.' (Introduction)