In this episode we look at the devastation that bushfires have wrought upon the Australian landscape, and their effect on early colonial literature with PhD candidate, Finnuala Morgan.

Our featured story - Black Thursday - profiles the first recorded 'major' bushfire in Victoria in 1851.

Mentioned in the episode

Charles Harpur’s 1851 poem called The Bush Fire

A collection of Australian bushfire stories published by Orbiter - 

Black Thursday and Other Lost Australian Bushfire Stories

Mythologised, memorialised then forgotten: a history of Australia’s bushfire reporting by Finn Morgan

Black Thursday bushfires

Main Stories

Black Thursday

Ria: A West Australian Story

To Be Continued in Trove

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This appendix episode features two bushfire stories from Australia's early colonial life.

One of the earliest bushfire narratives, William Howitt’s short story Black Thursday, is an adaptation of his own reporting on the fire disaster of the same name. Black Thursday (February 7, 1851) was perhaps the first great fire disaster in settler Australian history. Although no official records exist, it is estimated that almost a quarter of the Victorian colony was burned. Howitt’s literary account is partly a revision of his own reporting that drew together different newspaper accounts to present a sensational report of unprecedented destruction. Howitt’s narrative is ultimately a tale of settler endurance that features protagonist Robert Patterson successfully navigating the difficulties of bush life. Nonetheless, he draws heavily on these journalistic accounts for both the narrative setting and the description of the fire itself.

Ria: A West Australian Story is notable as the only representation of a woman fighting a bushfire at the fire-front, rather than within the boundaried perimeter of the property or directly outside the homestead. This story presents the opportunity for discussion of gender norms and the gendered politics of fire-fighting

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Listen along as three tales featuring ghosts, ghouls and Australian gothic are performed for the first time in a hundred years by talented voice actors.

Find the newspaper articles with the s tories here:

A Bush Ghost Story

The Storyteller: An Australian Ghost Story

An Australian Ghost Story

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In this episode we take a spooky turn as host Dr Rod Lamberts discusses ghosts, ghouls and the Australian gothic with PhD candidate Clare Burnett.

Burnett tells us that there was a time people claimed Australia didn’t have enough ‘cultural infrastructure’ to write gothic stories- but they were very wrong!

Our featured stories feature the biggest tropes of this genre: murders, ghosts, bushrangers and twist endings. What do these fears tell us of the mindset of the time?

Mentioned in the episode

The story that A Bush Story took cues from: The Ghost Upon the Rail by John Lang

Information on Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

Early Australian writers mentioned: Barbara Baynton and Marcus Andrew

A A Phillips, author of ‘The Cultural Cringe’ (1950)

Early American Gothic writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe

Women and the Bush by Kay Schafer

The Ghost of Bamboo Gully or The Headless Woman by Mark Antony

A Tasmainan Girl

To Be Continued in Trove

Main Stories

A Bush Ghost Story

The Storyteller: An Australian Ghost Story

An Australian Ghost Story

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In this special introductory episode, we dive into where all the amazing stories in the series come from.

Host Dr Rod Lamberts speaks with Australian National University’s Dr Katherine Bode about how the massive database that inspired this podcast came about and how her work as a historian has helped her understand the hopes and dreams for the future people had through the fiction they were reading and writing.

The 'To Be Continued' database project aims to gather all the fiction that was published in Australian newspapers during the 19th and early 20th centuries, together Rod and Dr Bode discuss she is attempting to recreate the reading culture of Australia during this era, where newspapers, rather than books, were the primary source of reading material.

But the ‘To Be Continued’ project relies on searching through Trove, the National Library of Australia's digital collection. Trove is publicly accessible, and volunteers can help correct optical character recognition (OCR) errors, enhancing the quality of digitised texts.

The conversation then veers towards the influence and role of AI technologies like Chat GPT in literature. Bode acknowledges the intriguing possibilities presented by these technological advancements but also emphasises the human touch's irreplaceable value in interpreting what's relevant or significant in fiction to different contexts like Australian history or specific readership groups. The future potential of AI in reshaping reading and writing experiences is an exciting thought for Kath.

Mentioned in the episode

Dr Bode’s piece at humanities.org.au: To be continued: making (and discovering) Australia’s literary history

Elizabeth Braddon's ‘Vixen’

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The ground-breaking new podcast, 'To Be Continued,' is set to breathe new life into Australia's hidden literary history! This compelling series is dedicated to shining a light on the 'lost' Australian literature that was originally printed in newspapers from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, now rediscovered and carefully catalogued by Australian National University researcher Katherine Bode and her team. 

'To Be Continued' uses a dynamic 'read and react' format, featuring the voices of talented actors who breathe life into these forgotten tales. Accompanying each narration, our astute host, Rod Lamberts, engages in insightful discussions with experts in the field, amplifying the narratives and contextualising their significance in the historical and contemporary milieu. 

Each subsequent episode plunges into a different aspect of Australian life and culture. With themes ranging from Australian gothic, bushrangers, bushfires, to modernity, children's fiction, and stories within stories. 

It's more than just a podcast; it's a journey back in time, an excavation of hidden stories, and an affirmation of Australia's rich literary heritage. 'To Be Continued' will change the way you think about Australian literature, and perhaps even about Australia itself. 

Subscribe to 'To Be Continued' now on your favourite podcast platform. The past awaits!

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