Posted by Jeremy Kriewaldt on March 25, 2002 at 18:41:01 from 211.28.96.39:
In Reply to: Re: Colonialism in S&As posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on March 25, 2002 at 15:31:35:
The other kind of colonialism is the Australian background of Mary Walker (remembering that AR's grandfather was an Australian as well). Some of the stories that Mother tells Titty (SA ch18) are just wrong - we have possums down under (opossums live in North America) and there are no "little brown bears" and if AR meant koalas it would be very difficult to get them to eat anything except the leaves of their preferred eucalypts. These stories are really in my view an example of common misconceptions in the UK of what Australia was like.
I would also like to know about the lass who was "brought up close to SYdney Harbour" (SA ch2) and whose own childhood was on a sheep station in Australia (SA ch 18). This is not impossible, but Sydney is, as Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson discussed in the Bulletin, a long way from the bush and this was not a usual combination (unless Mary Walker had been a child in the bush and then gone to boarding school in Sydney).