Literature in North Queensland - Some Thoughts on Regionalism

Abstract

Literature in North Queensland - the regional concept; parochialism, chauvinism, hymns to the Barrier Reef, defensiveness - or perhaps the way of the Fugitive writers in Nashville, Tennessee: purification, selective tradition, agrarianism, elegant reaction?  

In the beginning were the adventurers, Kennedy, Leichhardt, el al., originally aimless, not forcing any dream upon reality, devoid of imagination, modestly endowed with self-expression, delighting us if they should write passable letters in copperplate, hungering for the absolutely unknown, for uncertainties and dangers, to feel alive, to discover their own existence, even like Heideggerian man lured to the brink of self-annihilation to experience authenticity, as remarkable as climbers of Everest, prodigious, but blind. And after them, the mixed spirits, more fearful, in whom predominates the desire for security assured by possession of property.