In Dunedin as part of a NZ holiday but research always beckons. Limited internet but I manage in snippets when free wi-fi available! Interested to know if I can track down any more information on Wilcken (another German writer of early Australian fairytales) who taught music for sometime in Dunedin and gave a concert at the Choral Hall. A conversation with another PhD student Jai Paterson about her intriguing thesis topic which examines Trans-Tasman migrant flows between Australia and New Zealand (from respectable families) sent me off on this quest. Unfortunately Beatrice did not emerge in any diaries or papers. The Dunedin Historical Society did not have her name in their archives. But when visiting Olverston House, amazingly fully furnished as when lived in with its original owners, my ears pricked up when I discovered its library (including children's books) remained intact. Unfortunately her book was not found in the inventory so I couldn't argue for it being taken to New Zealand or that she may have known this musical family, taught their children music lessons or at least been part of their musical circle. This tangent does not contribute to my thesis argument, except to eventually allow a social-literary interpretation of two writers Ernst and Wilcken, linked because of their German cultural background. I remain fascinated with this cultured lady who travelled from Germany and UK to visit her son and his family in Australia, giving music lessons and concerts in Tasmania and Dunedin, writing a book for Australian children in her second language of English (enticing prose/descriptions) and sadly passing away in her hotel room in Rangoon on her way home at the age of 60.
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
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