The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety

by Peter Pierce

• ISBN13: 9780521594400
• ISBN10: 0521594405
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The figure of the lost child has haunted the Australian imagination. Peter Pierce’s original and sometimes shocking study The Country of Lost Children traces this ambivalent and disturbing history. In the nineteenth century the idea of losing one’s child to a strange country reflected white settlers’ distrust of their new land and its Aboriginal inhabitants. The book offers original insights into the passing of an opportunity for reconciliation between European and indigenous Australians. In the twentieth century the lost child continues to torment the national consciousness, but no longer as the bewildered wanderer in the bush. Instead the emblematic lost child of modern Australia is a victim of abuse, abandonment or abduction. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from poetry, fiction and newspaper reports to paintings and films, this book analyses the cultural and moral implications of the lost child in our history.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii	(2)
Acknowledgements	ix	(2)
Introduction	xi
Part I In the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Lost Child	3	(92)
The Lost Child Introduced: Henry Kingsley's The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn	11	(5)
`Come let us sing of this fair child heroic': Jane Duff and her brothers	16	(13)
Alfred Boulter	29	(25)
A Monument at Daylesford	34	(6)
Marcus Clarke's Lost Children	40	(6)
The Case of Clara Crosbie	46	(8)
Frederick McCubbin's Images of the Lost Child	54	(6)
Fairytales of the 1890s	60	(5)
The Bush Balladists' Turn	65	(6)
Mrs Praed and the Punishment of Mrs Tregaskiss	71	(6)
Henry Lawson and 'The Babies in the Bush'	77	(9)
Joseph Furphy's 'Perfect Young-Australian'	86	(9)
Part II In the Twentieth Century: The Child Abandoned	95	(107)
In the Theatre	99	(15)
Ray Lawler: Bubba and the Baby Dolls	99	(5)
`They wasn't in our line': The Lost Children of Patrick White	104	(10)
In Fiction	114	(37)
`Our dread of the coming society': Thomas Keneally's Fiction	116	(5)
`Keeping control of the young': Frank Moorhouse and the Lost Child	121	(7)
Leone Sperling's Mother's Day	128	(5)
Home Time with Beverley Farmer	133	(2)
`Who would bring kids into this world?': Ian Moffitt's The Colour Man	135	(3)
`I've had my children': Jennifer Maiden's Play with Knives	138	(5)
`Infected by Lost Child disease': The Fiction of Carmel Bird	143	(3)
The Lost Child's Unwelcome Return: David Malouf's Remembering Babylon	146	(5)
Book into Film	151	(28)
The Back of Beyond	153	(3)
Walkabout	156	(3)
Picnic at Hanging Rock	159	(5)
Manganinnie	164	(4)
Fortress	168	(4)
Evil Angels	172	(7)
True Stories	179	(23)
Peter Carey's Testaments	181	(3)
Abductions	184	(4)
`Little boy lost in a lost town'	188	(4)
Talk of the Devil	192	(3)
Orphans of the Empire	195	(3)
The Stolen Generation	198	(4)
Works Consulted	202	(4)
Index	206