"Land of weird fauna...wondrous flora...land of the coral barrier, of coral-girdled green islands, of jungle covered tropical mountains...land that shows a diversity and beauty of scenery surpassed by no other on the face of the earth..."(Archibald Meston, Brisbane Courier, 1 January 1901)
North Queensland locations have featured in various works of literature since the late 19th century. Many of them are autobiographical, or are autobiographical novels that blur the line between history and fiction. They are powerful vehicles for evoking the past, with colorful descriptions of the landscape and the characters that inhabited it, and dialogues that bring to life the voices of the ordinary people.
EJ Banfield (1852-1923) was a writer who lived a reclusive and mostly self-sufficient lifestyle on Dunk Island from 1897 until his death in 1923.
Banfield had worked as a journalist for most of his life, and was also employed by the government to write pamphlets such as The Torres Strait Route from Queensland to England. While on Dunk he continued to contribute articles to mainly North Queensland newspapers and journals, and was commissioned by the Queensland government to write a pamphlet promoting tourism in North Queensland. He wrote several books and novels while living on Dunk, of which Confessions of a Beachcomber (1908) is the most well known. He also wrote My Tropic Isle (1911) and Tropic Days (1918).
Last Leaves From Dunk Island was published in 1925 from his notes.
'Jack' Idriess, as he was known to his mates in the bush, arrived in North Queensland in 1912. He worked as an independent miner, or 'tin scratcher' at Wondecla, near Herberton. As well as working as a miner, he sent regular correspondence to The Bulletin under the pen name 'The Gouger'. His experiences around Herberton provided him with the material for Back o' Cairns (1958).
Idriess also worked as a miner on the Annan River near Cooktown, and his experiences there were recorded in his 1959 book The Tin Scratchers: The story of tin mining in the far North.
Idriess then moved further north to Cape York, where he lived with an aboriginal tribe. His adventures in frontier north Queensland gave him ample material for many of the more than 50 books he wrote.
Xavier Herbert lived in Far North Queensland from the end of World War Two, first taking up a dairy lease on the Daintree River after demobilisation, then buying a house in Redlynch, Cairns in 1951. It is here he wrote most of his stories and novels, including his epic tome Poor Fellow My Country ; a book that not only bears the distinction of being the longest novel ever published in Australia, but like most of the art and literature of northern Australia, was largely ignored by the intellectual and literary elites of the south. Quite understandably, they lived in a completely different geographical and cultural environment. Published in 1975, Poor Fellow My Country was not only long in the reading, it weighed in at over 4 pounds, contained 1,463 pages, and cost the hefty sum of $20 per copy.
While most of Xavier Herbert's stories were set in the Northern Territory, they dealt with issues of tropical northern Australia in general, particularly black - white relations. Herbert drew inspiration from tropical North Queensland, making sojourns into the rainforests and outback, often spending weeks or months away from home in bush camps between Cairns and Cooktown. On one expedition with fellow writer Percy Tresize, he discovered the Quinkan Caves aboriginal rock art galleries near Laura, previously unknown to Europeans.
Thea Astley (25 August 1925 – 17 August 2004) grew up in Brisbane and lived in Far North Queensland for relatively brief periods. After graduating from university, Astley worked as a teacher in Townsville, then moved to Sydney. Upon retirement, Astley lived in Kuranda for a short time, but then moved to the New South Wales South Coast. However, all of her novels and short stories were set in the tropics, and mostly in North Queensland.
Thea Astley published her first novel Girl with a Monkey in 1958, and published a total of 14 novels, as well as short stories and poetry over the next 40 years.
Why did Thea Astley base most of her stories in north Queensland? According to Susan Wyndham, who wrote an obituary to Astley after Astley's death in 2004:
Tropical Queensland was often the setting for her books because she delighted in its scenery, small communities and "screwballs".
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