Queer Oz Folk

Ranging from the convict settlement of Port Arthur, to the social heights of colonial Tasmanian Society, the gold rush towns of Ballarat and Bendigo, and the ballrooms of Marvelous Melbourne in the 1880s, this stranger-than-fiction book recounts the strange-but-true story of JL Irvine (1847-?). Banker, sporting champion, bon vivant, clubman, committee member, and friend to the colonial elites of Tasmania and Victoria, he was also a man with a secret, a secret that would occasionally lead him into the half-light of the Victorian underworld, and a secret that would ultimately lead to his downfall, disgrace, and disappearance. Meticulously researched, written in a lively and engaging manner and lavishly illustrated, this is the story of colonial Australian society, both its glittering heights and its shadowy depths.

Mary Fullerton (1868-1946) and Mabel Singleton (1877-1965) met in Melbourne as suffrage and peace activists in Vida Goldstein's Women's Political Association. They remained together for thirty-five years as loving friends, raising Mabel's son born in 1911. Through her literary friendship with Miles Franklin (1879-1954), Mary Fullerton's last two volumes of poetry were published in the 1940s. Rescued from near destruction, a box of Mary's manuscripts eventually made its way to the Mitchell Library. It contained poems she never sent to Miles Franklin. These poignant poems, many dedicated to Mabel, trace a love story that sheds light on how women of the early twentieth century may have understood their love for each other.

How do you best tell the story of Australia's most enigmatic bushranger-Captain Moonlite? The stories he told of his life conflict with the stories told by others, which conflict with the records. A well-educated man, in and out of asylums and prison, who finally found his purpose and his love leading a small gang of young men. Until they followed him into violent chaos. This book is a creative retelling of history, using many perspectives of fact and time-both yesteryear and today-to try and capture something of Moonlite the man, and the society that made him.