The Experimedia room in the State Library of Victoria was a surprise. Most of my time at the SLV has been spent hunched over microfiche readers in dark corrals persistently trying to unearth tiny deposits of information on Ernst. The light-filled bluestone lined courtyard (once a carpark between buildings) with its modern atrium ceiling and digital tools is an intriguing blend of past and future. Last night I was delighted that Hazel Edwards invited me to be part of the celebration of the ASA's 'rebirth' in Victoria, with the opportunity to meet other writers and gain a compelling insight into the future of books and authorship in the digital age.
I am always thrilled to be contacted by those who by chance find my blog. I have been blogging for three years and am hoping to complete my first draft by the end of the year. I thought it timely to re-publish what has already been published. The following is from my presentation at the University of Kassel, Germany. In 1904 Olga Ernst, a pupil teacher, wrote Fairy Tales from the Land of the Wattle. Although she was just sixteen years old, Ernst was one of a small group of writers in Australia who attempted to nationalise the fairytale towards the end of the nineteenth century, signalling quite clearly that they intended to affix the elves and fairies of Europe onto the Australian landscape aiming to fill a void that was keenly felt by the children of emigrants and the Australian-born children of emigrants. (Walker, 1988) The beginnings of the Australian bush fantasy genre can be linked with the desire to bring the comfortable and familiar into the new and distinctly non
Comments