The Farm Novel, Pastoral and Georgic of the Australian Sugar Industry
Conference Contribution ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Tony Hughes-d’Aeth has recently begun to unravel the origins of the 'farm novel' in Australia. He has also identified farm novels of the Western Australian wheatbelt. This paper explores the fiction of another type of industrial agriculture located on the opposite side of the continent. The Australian sugar industry depends on cultivation of sugarcane on approximately 4000 square kilometres of land, 95 percent of which is situated along the Queensland coast. Since the industry began in the mid-nineteenth century, writers of poetry and prose have shed light on related social issues, culture, politics, and history. In this paper I argue that Jean Devanny’s Cindie: A Chronicle of the Canefields (1946) and John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962) are two significant farm novels of the Australian sugar industry. Devanny's and Naish’s farm novels are further discussed in terms of the pastoral’s leisure and retreat, acceptance of past events, and city / country contrasts.
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ASAL 2020 Virtual: Reading and Writing Australian Literature
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18
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Online
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Association for the Study of Australian Literature
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Virtual
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