Last week I wrote a post on “literary outback Queensland”, following the route of a trip we had just finished. That trip ended up in Magandjin (or Brisbane), which is very definitely not “outback” so I decided to hold over Brisbane fiction for another post.

Brisbane is the capital of the state of Queensland. However, occupation of course long predates this colonial history. The oldest archaeological evidence for Aboriginal occupation dates back 22,000 years but the report used to provide these dates adds that “Brisbane is probably far older than [these dates suggest], with earlier evidence likely destroyed by the changing coastal and sub-coastal environment, coupled with rapid urban expansion”. Several Aboriginal groups claim traditional ownership of this area, including the Yagara, Turrbal and Quandamooka peoples. And these people have their own names for the city. The one best known to settler Australians is Meanjin, a Turrbal word for the land on which parts of the city are built, but another is Magandjin (sometimes spelt Maganjin), a Yagara word referring to the tulipwood tree. I’m not across the finer details here, but this seems to be the name that is the accepted or preferred name.

Colonial occupation commenced with the establishment of the Moreton Bay penal settlement at Redcliffe in 1824, but this settlement was moved to North Quay on the Brisbane River in 1825. From here the city developed in fits and starts as cities often do. You can read about it at the link on Brisbane above if you are interested. I lived in Brisbane through most of my primary school years.

For this post I’ve decided to share a selection of books in chronological groupings – by setting, not by publication. Listing the books chronologically by publication would have its own validity in terms of capturing the interests of the period they were written (regardless of the period in which they were set), but I’ve decided to take the simpler route and focus on the picture they build of Brisbane. Most on my list I’ve read, some before blogging, but there are some TBR wishlist books here too.

Colonial era (19th century)

I have chosen two novels to represent Magandjin’s colonial area:

Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (2023, my review): set primarily in colonial Brisbane in the 1850s, with a brief section set in the 1820s as the settlers started to arrive, and a contrasting modern narrative set in 2024, Edenglassie paints a picture of colonial society from a First Nations perspective. Lucashenko said her main aims were to ask “what was going through these people’s [the colonisers’] minds?” (as things could have been different) and to counteract the trope of the dying race. It’s a vivid and engaging book.

Jessica Anderson, The commandant (1975, my review): also set in colonial Brisbane, but in the abovementioned penal colony of Moreton Island in 1830. It is Anderson’s only historical novel, but was apparently her favourite. It was inspired by the real story of its commandant, Patrick Logan. Known as a harsh leader, he was murdered while out on an expedition. The story is told mostly through the eyes of his (fictional) younger, visiting sister-in-law.

20th Century

Brisbane is Australia’s most northern state capital – Darwin being a territory capital – and was closest to the South West Pacific Area theatre of World War II. Consequently, it played a major role in Australia’s defence, and became a temporary home to thousands of Australian and American servicemen and women. Naturally, this significantly affected the city’s social and political environment. Many novelists have explored this time, but I’m sharing just a few, followed by some novels set later in the century.

Ariella van Luhn, Treading air (2016, my review): set in Townsville 1922, and then Brisbane 1945, this work of historical fiction was inspired by a petty criminal named Lizzie O’Dea. Van Luyn creates vivid pictures of Brisbane, including the story of Lizzie’s theft of “bully beef and US army blankets”, which conveys much about the stresses of the time.

Melanie Myers, Meet me at Lennon’s (2019, my review): set in WW2 Brisbane when American servicemen were in town, sweeping young women off their feet and not always paying attention to their moral compass! My 1929-born Mum was a young woman at the time, and her school was taken over by the American military. Myers’ novel fictionalises the stories and places mum told us about.

David Malouf, Johnno (1975, read before blogging): semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in 1940s-50s Brisbane, with the first person narrator telling of his friendship with his schoolmate, “Johnno”. Malouf captures well-to-do Brisbane life, but also the challenges of growing up and finding one’s place.

Thea Astley, The slow natives (1965, on my TBR): set in the mid-1960s, says Wikipedia, examining “the relationships between suburban Brisbanites, including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son”. Explores the sort of emotional and spiritual aridity that is often at the heart of Astley’s fiction, and that may have stemmed, at least partly, from her youthful experience of life in Brisbane.

Toni Jordan, Fragments (2018): a dual narrative literary mystery which moves backwards and forwards between 1930s New York and balmy 1980s Brisbane.

Trent Dalton, Boy swallows universe (2018, my review): semi-autobiographical story of a young boy growing up in the 1980s and 90s, in working class suburban Brisbane; a story about a childhood characterised by drugs and violence, but also love.

Andrew McGahan, Praise (1992, read before blogging): set in 1990s Brisbane, this novel triggered the Australian literary genre, grunge lit, which Wikipedia describes as, “an Australian literary genre usually applied to fiction or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchise young people living in suburban or inner-city surroundings”. Andrew Stafford reviewed Praise in The Guardian, drawing some comparisons with Johnno:

it captured the town’s torpor and the ambivalence of its inhabitants better than any book since David Malouf’s Johnno.

But whereas Malouf luxuriated in detailed poetic descriptions and may have been the first writer to describe Brisbane as a “big country town” (and Johnno moved at about the same pace), Praise was full of pent-up energy. A classic of Australian dirty realism, it’s a novel in which not a lot happens – but like Brisbane itself, all the action is happening beneath the banal facade, fuelled by frustration and repressed rage.

21st Century

Brisbane in this century has experienced some major disasters, including serious flooding, which are increasing in frequency due to climate change. (This report from the Queensland government is instructive.) It has also been a period of high population growth and significant infrastructure development. It feels like a city on the move, but not without tensions over the potential for negative outcomes.

Donna Cameron, The rewilding (2024, my review): set in contemporary Australia, this work of ecofiction takes us on a wild road trip from Sydney to northern Queensland via disaster-struck flooded Brisbane where our eco-warrior protagonist, Nia, takes risks amongst Brisbane’s skyscrapers to promote her planet-saving cause.

Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (2014, my review): three-part work, set largely in Brisbane, but with stories set throughout Australia. The middle part, “Water”, is a longform story set in the near future, at least it was from 2014 when it was written, as it’s set in the 2020s. Australia is a republic with a female president, a new flag, and Jessica Mauboy’s song “Gotcha” as the national anthem. However, life isn’t perfect. Narrator Kaden is a Cultural Liaison Officer who thought she’d be working with “other Aboriginal people”. Instead, she she’s to work with “plantpeople” who are sort of mutant plants with human features created during “islandising” experiments. It’s a story about how we treat other, about segregation, discrimination and dirty politics.

Brisbane is home to many wonderful novelists whom I haven’t mentioned here (like Susan Johnson, and Nick Earls), and to the impressive University of Queensland Press which does a sterling job of supporting First Nations and other Australian writing.

Do you have any favourite Brisbane-based books?

I started writing this in late August, before we headed off on our outback Queensland trip, revisiting many places from my childhood, as well as seeing some new places. It was while living in Mt Isa, in northwest Queensland that I developed my love of Australian literature and of the Australian landscape. I was 11 when we moved there, and 14 when we left.

Queensland is, area-wise, Australia’s second largest state (though third largest in terms of population). Wikipedia has articles on the different regions of Queensland, but the areas and specific places we are moving through are:

• Far North Queensland: encompassing part of the Great Barrier Reef, Cape York Peninsula, the Atherton Tablelands, the Daintree Forest and Queensland’s part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is the only part of Australia that is the country of both Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
• North Queensland: includes Mt Isa
• Central West Queensland: includes Longreach, Winton, and Barcaldine.

These are my focus in this post, though from the Central West we will continue southeast to Brisbane, passing through some other notable areas. We visited nearly all the places I mention below on our recent trip, or we were in their vicinity, waving at their road signs as we whizzed by!

To describe the landscape would take a post in itself, but I’ll just say that this area includes tropical regions that are frequently visited by cyclones, and dry western regions that are frequently visited by drought. Tourism, agriculture (including sugarcane), pastoral (featuring huge cattle stations), and mining are the main industries of the area. First Nations people live throughout the state, but not all communities have survived well. Much has been lost. It was while living in Mount Isa in the 1960s that I first learnt that there were different Aboriginal nations (though we didn’t use the word “nation” then.) The Kalkadoons (more properly now, Kalkatungu) were my introduction to Australian Aboriginal culture and history, not that we learnt much. But it did frame my early understandings of what Australia was.

While the big coastal cities – Cairns and Townsville – are well populated, this more western area is far more sparse, but it is nonetheless home to more Australian literature than you might think. A few years ago, I reviewed a book that focused on literature of cyclone country, Chrystopher J. Spicer’s Cyclone country: The language of place and disaster in Australian literature. In this book, he discusses five writers, whom I will include in my list below.

Moving now to literature, specifically, Spicer argues that weather is inseparable from the physical and experiential aspects of the landscape. One of his points concerns how writers capture the idea that people who live in cyclone areas “integrate” the experience in some way into their identity – and into their understanding of how to live in that place. This is probably true in all areas which have “big” weather, not just cyclones but also events like droughts. Regardless, many writers have drawn on the weather as much as the landscape to enhance their stories and ideas. Teresa Smith, reviewing Mirandi Riwoe‘s historical novel Stone sky, gold mountain (2020), which is set during the gold rush in the Palmer River area near Far North Queensland’s Cooktown, writes that “There is no mistaking the location within this novel … anyone who has lived in central and north Queensland will relate to the sense of cloying and oppressive heat that lifts from the pages of this story …”

Over the years, I have read many novels set wholly or partly in outback and remote Queensland. Two authors, though, who stand out are Alexis Wright and Thea Astley. Both have written powerfully and evocatively about the region, pulling no punches about its social, economic and psychic challenges. I’m not, however, going explore this in detail. Instead, I’m sharing a selective list of works, roughly following the trip we took, to give you a flavour! (This means some authors you might expect, won’t appear here!)

A literary trip through Outback Queensland

Our trip started in Cairns, where we did a day trip north before we went west through the Atherton Tablelands, and its sugarcane, gold and timber towns, to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Then we wended south through Mount Isa, Winton, Longreach, Barcaldine and on to Roma and Toowoomba, before heading east to Brisbane.

Carins, Kuranda, the Daintree, Port Douglas, and environs:

• Thea Astley, Girl with monkey (1958), A boatload of home folk (1968), Hunting the wild pineapple (1979, my post on the titular story), The multiple effects of rainshadow (1996, my review) are some of the books Brisbane-born Astley, who lived for many years in north Queensland, set in the region. Her focus was outcasts, misfits and injustice.
• Xavier Herbert wrote many of his books while living in Redlynch, on the edge of Cairns, but in fact his subject matter tended to be the Northern Territory.
• Susan Hawthorne, Earth’s breath (2009) is a verse novel inspired by the 2006 landfall of Cyclone Larry, which affected many coastal towns around Cairns and across the Atherton Tablelands.

Tinaroo: Myfanwy Jones, Cool water (2023, my review) is set on the Atherton Tablelands, with an historical narrative based around the building of the Tinaroo Dam in the mid-1950s and a modern timeline set in the same place. Its theme, however, is not so much environmental, as you might expect, as toxic masculinity.

Karumba and the Gulf of Carpentaria: Alexis Wright, Carpentaria (2006, my post), and Praiseworthy (2023): Wright is an activist and writer from the Waanyi nation in the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her novels capture the region’s political and cultural tensions and challenges, the long tail of invasion and dispossession, with a vibrancy and humour that never forgets the dark side.

Normanton: Nevil Shute’s A town like Alice (1950) is partly set in a fictional outback Australian town which is based on Normanton (and nearby Burketown). It features an entrepreneurial young English woman determined to lift the economy, and make it a “town like Alice”.

Mount Isa and the Barkly Tablelands

• Vance Palmer’s Golconda trilogy (Golconda, 1948; Seedtime, 1957, and The big fellow, 1959) is set in Mount Isa, and explores industrial conflict between miners and management.
• Debra Dank’s memoir We come with this place (2022, my review) is set in the Northern Territory-northern Queensland region, including the Barkly Tablelands on which Mount Isa sits. Dank truth-tells about her people’s life and culture.

Dagworth (sheep station), Kynuna and Winton: AB “Banjo” Paterson’s poem and song “Waltzing Matilda” was written and first performed in this region around 1894 to 1895, though details seem to vary a little about which verses were written where, where it was first performed, its inspiration in characters of the region, and Banjo’s role in the 1894/95 Shearer’s Strike.

Barcoo River: Janette Turner Hospital, Forecast: Turbulence (2011) (partially read) is a bit of a stretch, because its stories are as much set in the USA as in Australia, as far as I can tell, but one of the stories, the “Republic of Outer Barcoo”, refers to the Barcoo River which joins Longreach’s Thomson River to flow into Coopers Creek. Newtown Review of Books says that “Throughout this collection characters’ emotional states are reflected in the weather, or described in terms of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes or the isobars on a weather map” which Chrystopher Spicer would have loved. The Barcoo also features in some Paterson poems. However, I really wanted to include it here because the Barcoo, in the ANU’s words, “has been used since the 1870s as a shorthand reference for the hardships, privations, and living conditions of the outback”. This is a meaning I’ve grown up with. But, the ANU adds that “Barcoo can also denote more positive aspects of outback life: a makeshift resourcefulness” and “a laconic bush wit”.

Barcaldine: William Lane’s A workingman’s paradise is set in Sydney, but includes a character from the Barcaldine-based 1891 Shearers’ strike. He is in Sydney rustling up support for the cause. The striking shearers in Barcaldine, apparently, flew the Eureka flag during and sang Henry Lawson’s “Freedom on the Wallaby”.

Injune: Frank Dalby Davison’s Man-shy (1931, read at high school) about men and cattle, and Dusty (1946) about a drover and his part-dingo dog, were set in this district where Davison had worked on cattle properties.

Roma: Patrick White’s Voss (1957) was inspired by Ludwig Leichhardt’s second fated expedition. It was west of Roma that his party disappeared leaving no trace.

Toowoomba and the Darling Downs: Patrick White’s aforementioned Voss passed through this area.

These books span a century, but Peter Pierce’s The Oxford literary guide to Australia, includes novelists, poets and other writers from the 19th century who lived and wrote the region. The works that I have mentioned vary in their subject matter, but many deal with the challenges of coping with the isolation and the elements (one way or another), and their characters often survive because of their ingenuity and sense of humour. Many of the novels are political, like William Lane’s inclusion of the shearer’s strike in his and Vance Palmer’s dealing industrial unrest in a mining community. First Nations people do not feature strongly in novels by non Indigenous writers, but their own writers are now starting to correct that absence. The landscape – which ranges from bare and brown in the outback to almost too lush and oppressive in the tropics – can be richly metaphorical as well as literal. And, the weather is omnipresent in much of the writing. All these features, I think, mark these books out as essentially different from their urban counterparts.

So, I’ve not included Brisbane, nor the majority of the east coast. Another time perhaps? Meanwhile, now’s your opportunity to tell me what you think and share some of your favourite novels set in remote regions of your country.