Read Stephen’s lively notes below.
Banner image sourced from Wiki Commons.
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The judges of the prize note that the essay is a ‘powerful and thoroughly researched revelation of the Irish women who fiercely defended their homes at Baker’s Flat in the late 1800s. This original research provides a refreshing new insight into the names, lives and circumstances of these often anonymous women, as they successfully contested the power of the dominant male establishment figures. An important new perspective on property rights, gender and the Irish diaspora in South Australian history.’
Susan Arthure is no stranger to the winner’s podium: she won the History Council of South Australia’s Wakefield Press Essay Prize in 2020, for her essay titled ‘Kapunda’s Irish Connections’. This essay was an excerpt from Irish South Australia: New histories and insights, a collection which Susan also edited, along with Fidelma Breen, Stephanie James, and Dymphna Lonergan.
Read Susan’s winning essay below.
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Drawing on a range of archival sources, the essays presented here offer fresh perspectives on Baudin’s scientific voyagers, their work and its legacy. What emerges is a deeper appreciation of the Baudin expedition’s contribution to the pursuit of science, and of those who pursued it.
In a special three-part guest series on the blog, John West-Sooby discusses how the book came to be, and the discoveries made along the way. In this first instalment, we discover the important role that historical archives played in shedding light on the voyage.
Read on below.
Continue readingBanner image: Terre De Diemen: Ile Maria. Tombeaux des Naturels, (detail) by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur
In this special guest post, learn about how the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger is linked to the plight of dingoes in our current times; how the earliest Australian women’s communal artwork is under threat, and how it all links back to folk art.
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Wendy Scarfe is the author of A Mouthful of Petals, a nonfiction account of three years working in an Indian village in the early 1960s. Previously published, it became a classic among good samaritans, particularly in Britain, and was reviewed by The Times, New Statesman and such like.
In this guest post, Wendy reflects on a past brush with book censorship and her experiences writing and publishing a biography amidst political turmoil.
Travelling between England and Australia and working on stage, in film and on television for over fifty years, Ed Pegge knows all the tricks and all the trials of a working actor’s life.
In this guest post, Ed writes about the nuances of fame, and the benefits of taking a brief rest every now and again from being a star.
A Mouthful of Petals is a nonfiction account of three years working in an Indian village in the early 1960s. Previously published, it became a minor classic, and has since been re-released by Wakefield Press. This new edition includes an account of Wendy Scarfe’s return trip to Sokhodeora during a famine in the late 1960s, and how those who live in Bihar state fare in the early twenty-first century.
‘It describes with warmth, sympathy and occasional near-despair, the life of an Indian village from the inside’ – Nancy Cato
John Read is used to working remotely, and often in accidental isolation. An ecologist and author, John lives on South Australia’s largest privately managed nature reserve with his wife, children and endangered malleefowl and marsupials.