Australian Children’s Literature EDU21ACL Week 10 - Lecture 1: Australian Children’s Literature EDU21ACL Week 10 - Lecture 1 Beneath the Southern Cross I stand,
A sprig of wattle in my hand,
A native of my native land,
Australia, you bloody beauty!!
Numerous Australian cricket teams, of recent times © La Trobe University, David Beagley 2006
Slide2: The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
Slide3: I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains,
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me.
Slide4: The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil. Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But when the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The stealthy soaking rain.
My Country - Dorothea McKellar
A sense of identity: A sense of identity Key to much of Australian cultural and social exploration of the last century are two questions:
Where am I?
Who am I?
Where am I? - the sense of place is integral to defining Australia as distinct from elsewhere
Who am I? - once place is determined, then the reaction of people to it creates and shapes character
A sense of identity: A sense of identity I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.
And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.
From Clancy of the Overflow – AB Paterson
We keep returning to “What is Australian?”: We keep returning to “What is Australian?” Is it …
written IN Australia
set IN Australia
written BY an Australian
aimed AT an Australian audience
refer TO Australia
written ABOUT Australia
REQUIRE Australia as a key aspect
REFLECT Australian society and values
What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from: What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from Just Annoying
Horrendo’s Curse
Kath and Kim/The Castle/Crackerjack
The Glass House/The Panel/Rove
Humour generally
What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from: What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from Tiff and the Trout
The Bamboo Flute
No Gun for Asmir
Hitler’s Daughter
Dougy
NIPS XI
What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from: What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from Deep Water
Ash Road
Storm Boy
Tomorrow when the war began
Adventure stories
What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from: What do we learn, therefore, about Australia from Runestone
Dragonkeeper
Sabriel
Shædow Keeper
Snugglepot and Cuddlepie
The Magic Pudding
Fantasy worlds
Slide12: This here is the wattle
It’s the emblem of our land.
You can stick it in a bottle
Or hold it in your hand.
The Philosophy Department of the University of Wooloomooloo Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 22