The cyclone written into our place: the cyclone as trope of apocalypse and place in Queensland literature

Working within a physical landscape that has felt the impact of tropical cyclones and cyclone surges for some 6000 years, including the largest loss of life from a single cyclone in Australian recorded history, Queensland writers have for many years attempted to incorporate both the terror and the sublime of the cyclone into their sense of place. Yet, while studies have been carried out into the significance of cyclonic storms in the literature of other geographic areas, there has been surprisingly little examination until this thesis of the literature of tropical cyclones in Queensland, one of the most cyclone-prone areas in the world. The tropical cyclone is so integral to North Queensland place and regional life that it has its own season. To successfully inhabit this place, the Queenslander must live with cyclones, incorporating them into the imaginary as well as the literal life: into the country of the mind as well as the physical environment. In this region of seasonal storm, the cyclone is a defining trope of the literary place, and so it is important to examine its significance there. Cyclones as unpredictable wreakers of chaos and destruction regularly remind us of humankind's fragility. Although warnings can be given of their approach, the severity of their impact is in the end due to those natural and invisible elements that cannot be controlled. In an effort to cope with the uncontrollable, humankind seeks meaning in the random meaninglessness of chaos and destruction. For some, cyclones are instruments of divine retribution, whereas for others they are an apocalyptic event that reveals the chance for redemption and renewal, and it is such searches for meaning within chaos that are evident in Queensland literature. Some writers, such as Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, have seen within cyclones the Burkean sublime, the beauty within the terror. For other writers, such as Thea Astley, Vance Palmer, and Patrick White, the cyclone brings spiritual epiphany and personal revelation, while also motivating community strength and compassion as people ignore differences and work together to survive and rebuild. Some writers see the cyclone within themselves as a personal trope, as Susan Hawthorne observes in her poetry. Other writers such as Alexis Wright see a deep and abiding spiritual bond between weather and country, between people and place, which speaks of our future as well as our past. This paper, then, will examine how writers in Queensland and of Queensland have sought for meaning within their literary landscape in order to cope with the chaos of their literal place. The metaphorics and aesthetics of tropical cyclones permeate Queensland literature. The cyclonic storm in Queensland literature reverberates with contexts of theme and setting, of plot and place, of tropes and tropics that encompass the complicated and symbiotic relations between society, nature, landscape, place and space. The cyclonic storm is a literary trope of both personal and collective awareness, of revelation within the stillness and spirituality of the cyclone's eye that enables the individual to emerge from the experience transformed. To transcend the tropical cyclone experience, one needs to be open to the epiphany of the revelation as these violent storms strip away the historic human over-growth, leaving room to re-build and for new life to grow. Cyclones can in this way narrate resilience in the face of natural disaster and allegorize the power of cultural consciousness to strengthen and unify communities and regions. Individuals and communities who have been alienated, weakened, or seemingly destroyed can be drawn closer by cyclonic events, discovering in the aftermath that which had previously been hidden, discovering hope and opportunity where previously were despond and despair. Such events and the stories of them can challenge previous human experience, thereby providing opportunity to move forward and rebuild, opportunity for the emergence of the new. While this research is concerned with the implications of the literary cyclone in Queensland, this thesis will also recognize that cyclonic storms and the literature of those storms appear in many other regions. The search for meaning within that literature is a search in which many are engaged around the globe, as we broaden our perception through revelations about the relationship between the individual, society, and the tropical biosphere, and between weather, person, and place

Great Australian World Firsts: the things we made, the things we did

From Sir Jack Brabham (first to win a Grand Prix in a car of his own design) to Tom Angove (inventor of the wine cask), from Bruce Thompson (introduced the first dual flush toilets) to Mary Fortune (the first female author of detective fiction) - here are the world's great ideas, inventions, feats and follies - as done first, by Australians

Pandemic, plague, pestilence and the tropics: critical inquiries from arts, humanities and social sciences

The Tropics have long been associated with exotic diseases and epidemics. This historical imaginary arose with Aristotle’s notion of the tropics as the ‘torrid zone’, a geographical region virtually uninhabitable to temperate peoples due to the hostility of its climate, and persisted in colonial imaginaries of the tropics as pestilential latitudes requiring slave labour. The tropical sites of colonialism gave rise to urgent studies of tropical diseases which lead to (racialised) changes in urban planning. The Tropics as a region of pandemic, plague and pestilence has been challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel coronavirus did not (simply) originate in the tropics, nor have peoples of the tropics been specifically or exclusively infected. The papers collected in this Special Issue disrupt the imaginary of pandemics, plague and pestilence in association with the tropics through critical, nuanced, and situated inquiries from cultural history, ethnography, cultural studies, science and technology studies, Indigenous knowledge, philosophy, anthropology, urban studies, cultural geography, literature and film analyses, and expressed through distinctive academic articles, poetry and speculative fiction

Cyclone country: the language of place and disaster in Australian literature

Cyclone Country is about our place, our weather, our stories and us. It is about our search for the words through which we find meaning amid the chaos, trauma, and devastation wrought by extreme weather events. These words and stories are important, for they form a cultural language by which we maintain relationships in such dire circumstances with our place and our community that help us cope. In this first study of its kind in Australia, Chrystopher J. Spicer discusses the function of words, story and literature in re-building cultural relationships after nature catastrophes, using as an example the literature of the Australian state of Queensland, the north and north-eastern coasts of which are characterized by the annual impact of cyclonic storms. Exploring a range of works, including Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria, Nobel Prize winner Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm, Vance Palmer’s Cyclone, and Susan Hawthorne’s poetry cycle Earth’s Breath, he proposes that the trope of the cyclone in the Queensland literary imagination is an example of cultural response to weather in a unique regional place, for weather is written into the cultural landscape. We can better understand and enable our place by embracing the revelations of extreme weather through the literature of the region

Clark Gable: biography, filmography, bibliography

"Clark Gable is a man de-classed. You can't guess in any way where he came from or what he was." Frank Taylor, producer of Gable's last film, The Misfits (1961), said this of the man who, to many people, will forever be Southern gentleman Rhett Butler of Gone with the Wind. This work tells Gable's life story, from his birth in 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to his death in 1960 in Hollywood. It chronicles his stage career, and of course gives information on every one of his films. His family background, his development as a person, the many romances including five marriages, and his relationships with friends and co-workers are all explored in detail. The sources used and the bibliography are fully annotated

Fall Girl: my life as a western stunt double

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, acclaimed horse trainer and show rider Martha Crawford Cantarini was among the busiest of Hollywood's elite corps of female stunt riders. She was the regular stunt double for such actresses as Eleanor Parker, Anne Baxter and Shirley MacLaine, appearing in films ranging from Elvis Presley's debut feature Love Me Tender to the epic Western The Big Country. Martha also hosted a Las Vegas television program in the 1960s, while her palomino Frosty gained fame as "the gambling horse" after rolling a seven at the Thunderbird Casino craps table.\ud \ud This fascinating insider's memoir of the American entertainment industry recounts Martha's personal and professional associations with Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan, Jean Simmons, and other Hollywood luminaries

Introduction

The Tropics havelong been associated with exotic diseases and epidemics. This historical imaginary arose with Aristotle’s notion of the tropics as the ‘torrid zone’, a geographical regionvirtually uninhabitable to temperatepeoples due to the hostility of its climate,andpersisted in colonial imaginaries of the tropics as pestilential latitudesrequiring slave labour.The tropical sites of colonialism gave rise to urgent studies of tropical diseases which lead to (racialised) changes in urban planning. The Tropics as a region of pandemic, plague and pestilence has been challenged during the COVID-­19 pandemic. The novel coronavirus did not(simply)originate in the tropics, nor have peoples of the tropics been specifically or exclusively infected. The papers collected in this Special Issue disruptthe imaginary of pandemics, plague and pestilence in association with the tropics throughcritical, nuanced, and situated inquiriesfromcultural history, ethnography,cultural studies, science and technology studies, Indigenous knowledge, philosophy, anthropology, urban studies, cultural geography, literature and filmanalyses, and expressed throughdistinctiveacademic articles, poetry and speculative fiction