Tropical Rainforest in Expedition Journals
Role
Principal Investigator
Description
This proposal is to conduct a comparative analysis of Ellis Rowan’s memoir The Flower Hunter: The adventures, in Northern Australia and New Zealand, of flower painter Ellis Rowan (1898) about her experience of visiting tropical rainforest in Queensland, Australia, with the journals of two people who travelled through the forests of the Congo in 1908 and 1909. This will allow consideration and analysis of perspectives of tropical rainforest in two countries in a comparable era. The latter journals are held in the Smithsonian libraries of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA). They are: A.B. Rendle, E.G. Baker and S. LeM. Moore’s An account of the plants collected by the Ruwenzori Expedition (1910) and M. W. Hilton-Simpson’s Land and peoples of the Kasai being a narrative of a two years’ journey among the cannibals of the equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo (1911). A third journal is M. W. Hilton-Simpson’s Journal of the Congo expedition: Containing narrative of the journey, personal notes, geographical notes (1909), which is available as a digital resource, a format that will enable me to begin my research before travelling. This project is designed to build on a major grant application submitted in March through the Australian Research Council to study rainforest representation in Australian fiction and life writing. The Smithsonian proposal does this by expanding the scope internationally. Should the DECRA be successful, this Fellowship would coincide with and support the literature review phase of that project.
Date
31 Jul 2025 - 26 Apr 2026
Project Type
N/A
Keywords
Rainforest;Expedition journals;Memoir;Queensland;Congo
Funding Body
Queensland Government Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (QDETSI)
Amount
26200
Project Team
N/A