McDonald Room, Menzies Library, ANU

'A "bushie" and a godless creature': a case study of the rejection of English identity and values in western Queensland, 1879-1919

Barbara Dawson, School of History, ANU

This paper examines concepts of identity in the writing of Rose Scott Cowen - an Australian woman with aristocratic connections - whose life straddled nineteenth-century colonialism and the post-colonialism period of the first half of the twentieth century. The first part of the paper probes the difficulties in defining ‘Englishness’, both in the British Isles and the Australian colonies, with reference to the complex application of the terms ‘English’ and ‘British’. Having reached some resolution to this problem, I proceed to explore Cowen’s Crossing Dry Creeks 1879-1919, published in 1961. The paper’s main focus is an exploration of the influences that formed Rose Cowen’s opinions and character during her life in western Queensland, where she lived amongst the sometimes hardened men and women of the outback and, in the Channel country, worked alongside Indigenous people.

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Please direct enquiries to Kynan.Gentry@anu.edu.au

Dr Barbara Dawson is a visitor, School of History, ANU. In December 2011 she retired from the Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, where she had worked since 1999. She completed a PhD in RSSS in 2007, and is now working on the publication of her thesis, and converting the fruits of her PhD research into journal articles. Her most recent publication is ‘Four Intrepid Scotswomen: Travellers to the Australian Colonies and their Representations of Aborigines’, in History Scotland Journal, July/August 2009.