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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Traces the fate of the 160,000 men, women and children transported between the dispatch of the First Fleet in May 1787 to Botany Bay, and the arrival of the latest convict ship in 1868 in Western Australia.' (Source: Trove)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording and braille
Works about this Work
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Helen Garner, Robert Hughes and the Mystery of Nonfiction
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , December vol. 81 no. 4 2022; (p. 196-208)'It's 45 years since Helen Garner published Monkey Grip and perhaps a while later that people realised how fine a writer she was. In 1997 there was that shock of recognition that someone had succeeded in re-creating inner-urban Melbourne, the 'aqua profunda' part of the Fitzroy pool, the tumult and tumbling from bed to bed of shared housing, the heartache of loving a junkie. The initial response to Monkey Grip was a response to a literary brave new world that was also the translation of something real. Indeed, there were critics such as the late Peter Pierce who said that Helen Garner had just talked dirty and called it realism. Yes, and along with this, there was the persistent accusation that she had simply published her diaries and served them up as fiction. This last point had come to seem like the most vulgar misprision by the time I wrote a full-dress defence of Garner in Judith Brett's Meanjin in the mid 1980s.' (Publication abstract)
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Of Warriors, Bad Apples and Blood Lust
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 80 no. 2 2021; 'On Australia’s ‘Day of Shame’, after the release of the Brereton Report, there was much talk of ‘warrior culture’ and ‘bad apples’. Sir Galahad, shining exemplar of warrior culture, never burnt villages or murdered children, but ‘bad apples’ has more of a ring of truth if applied to the few soldiers who take pleasure in killing. The uncomfortable phrase ‘blood lust’ rarely gets a mention, in spite of a nod in that direction in the Brereton Report. It’s damned awkward to chat about a topic like ‘reptilian ruthlessness … one of the strongest of human drives’.'(Introduction)
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Australia in Three Books
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 76 no. 1 2017; (p. 19-22) 'I’ve chosen authors born in the twentieth century, whose work was published over a span of not quite half a century, from 1941 to the year of the bicentenary, 1988. I know: I’ve chosen three books published over some 47 years when there’s almost another 230 colonial and post-colonial years and, of course, 60,000 more with rich stories of continental habitation to choose from.' (Introduction) -
New Cultural Landscapes : Australian Narratives in Literature and Film
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Ilha Do Desterro : A Journal of English Language , vol. 69 no. 2 2016; 'Australia. Terra Australis Incognita. Even before its official finding by Captain James Cook in 1770, the “land down under” already circulated in the European imagination. The giant mass of land necessary to balance a flat Earth (as antipodal to Europe) could only be home to a great many monstrous fauna and flora, as it was also the cultural counterpart to Europe. However, giant one-eyed monsters and sea serpents were not found by Captain Cook upon his arrival on Botany Bay, now part of Sydney. By declaring the land terra nullius, Cook ignored the many Aboriginal communities that had lived in Australia for over 75,000 years and such act has given way to one of the core elements in the development of Australian culture and history: the relationship between whites and Aborigines in the development of the nation.' (Introduction) -
Heaven and Hell and Robert Hughes
2015
single work
essay
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 16 December 2015; Includes extracts from The Fatal Shore
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Sociological and Historical Perspectives on Australia as Portrayed by Contemporary Australian Writers
1995-1996
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Commonwealth Review , vol. 7 no. 1 1995-1996; (p. 19-27) -
The Fatal Shore : A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1787-1868 : Robert Hughes (1938- )
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Classics : Fifty Great Writers and Their Celebrated Works 2007; (p. 280-284) -
Representations of Irishness in Contemporary Australian Fiction
Representações de ser irlandês na ficção australiana contemporânea
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture , January vol. 30 no. 1 2008; (p. 45-51) Australian history generates great fervour in intellectual and political circles in present-day Australia, and Ireland's contribution to the making of the continent is a hotly debated issue. This essay deals with Irishness in contemporary Australian fiction with a 19th century setting. The representations I will be exploring concern the Convict, the Bushranger, and the Catholic. I have put these three figures in ascending order, according to the degree of Irishness that they tend to carry with them in contemporary Australian fiction. If we are dealing with a convict; then the character may or may not be Irish; if a bush-ranger, then he is more likely than not to be Irish; if the character is Catholic, then he is certainly Irish.
A história da Austrália causa grandes debates intelectuais e políticos na Austrália contemporânea e a contribuição irlandesa na construção e no desenvolvimento do continente suscita muitas discussões. Esse artigo analisa a qualidade de ser irlandês, na ficçãoaustraliana contemporânea, tendo o século XIX como pano de fundo. Discute-se a representação do detento, do mateiro e do católico, colocados em ordem ascendente na medida em que encarnam o grau de qualidade de irlandês que cada um carrega na ficção australiana. Se o personagem é um detento, pode ou não pode ser irlandês; se é um mateiro, provavelmente é um irlandês; se o personagem é católico, com certeza é irlandês. (Author's abstract)
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Sea-change or Atrophy? The Australian Convict Inheritance
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 5 2011; This paper is an offshoot of a larger project which explored the possibility for the erstwhile settler-colonizer undergoing the sea-change into settler-indigene emergent through a study of selected novels of Patrick White. It became apparent to me that the convict figure, who played an ancillary role in these works, could lay claim to the status of white indigene well ahead of the main protagonist. Robert Hughes (in The Fatal Shore) discredits the idea of any bonding between the convict and the Aborigine but acknowledges examples of "white blackfellas"—white men who had successfully been adopted into Aboriginal societies. Martin Tucker's nineteenth century work, Ralph Rashleigh, offers surprising testimony of a creative work which bears this out in a context where Australian literature generally reflected the national amnesia with regard to the Aborigine and barely accorded them human status. Grenville's The Secret River (2005), based broadly on the history of her own ancestor, appears to support Hughes' original contention but is also replete with ambivalences that work against a simple resolution. This paper will explore some of the ambivalences, the 'food for thought' on aspects of the Australian experience highlighted by these literary texts, and glances briefly also at variations on the theme in Carey's Jack Maggs and the The True Story of the Kelly Gang. (Author's abstract)
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Books Shape Ideals, Dreams
2012
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 23 May 2012; (p. 12)
Awards
- 1987 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Non-Fiction Prize
- 1987 winner Duff-Cooper Award (UK)
Last amended 7 Sep 2021 10:14:16
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