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1996: Burra,
1845-185I This self-published monograph was the result of meticulous research into early records in Burra and the Mortlock Library, Adelaide concerning this small South Australian town which owed its beginnings to the discovery of copper. It became a major resource for my novel entitled: The Foundling: a tale of the Burra Burra Mine.
1999: Painting the Islands
Vermilion: Archibald Watson and the brig Carl This is the story of the notorious and flamboyant first professor of anatomy at Adelaide University, Archibald Watson, who jumped bail in Fiji on suspicion of blackbirding and fled to Europe. He eventually returned in a respectable guise. In Watson I found another colourful personality who, like Violet Nicolson, enjoyed notoriety in his lifetime, but whose contribution to his times - like hers - is now largely forgotten. The Watson of the scandalous anecdotes lives on in Australian medical circles today, but it seemed to me that there was far more to the man than mere humour. Here was a man typical of the squatting class with all its arrogance, a man buffered by wealth and influence; a man who after a near-disastrous brush with 'blackbirding' made the humanitarian field of medicine very much his own. It was a paradox well worth exploring. His peccadilloes, extraordinary teaching methods, and contempt of the establishment have also been examined in my biography, Painting the Islands Vermilion, which reveals a man truly 'larger than life' whose influence over his students extended long after graduation, as their reminiscences attest. 2000:
Eyes to the Future: Sketches of Australia and her Neighbours in the
1870s The scholarly qualities of my historical research and my lively writing led to the National Library of Australia commissioning Eyes to the Future for the NLA Press. The book draws mainly on first-hand unpublished accounts by visitors to, and inhabitants of Australia linked by my own narrative, and demonstrates the importance in Australian history of this much-neglected decade. |
