The autumn 1944 ‘Ern Malley’ edition of Max Harris's Angry Penguins was a defining moment in Australian cultural history for more than one reason. To add to the exposure of the Malley hoax in June 1944, Harris found himself in August having to defend charges of ‘indecent advertisements’ (Heyward, 184). Harris's partner in publishing Angry Penguins, John Reed, wrote in a letter of 5 September 1944 — the day the trial began in the Adelaide Magistrates Court — that the ‘indictment includes 7 of the Malley poems, all of Max's, the Cowan and Stivens stories and Collinson's poem’ (Reed, 367). The 19-year-old Brisbanite Laurence Collinson had conjured up a typically dramatic moment to announce his entry onto the national cultural stage — stumbling into a bit part in a drama that was both a crucial battle in the war between Australian literary modernists and traditionalists, and a worthy local precursor to Britain's Lady Chatterley trial of 1959.

In late nineteenth and early twentieth century Brisbane, writing became a profession that was increasingly open to women. This phenomenon developed partly in response to a rapidly expanding urban female audience, but in turn it helped to form the tastes, reading habits and social attitudes of new generations of female readers. The prolific and popular poet Emily Coungeau exemplifies a new, self-consciously cosmopolitan type of woman writer who emerged in Brisbane in the early twentieth century.

In the period between the First and Second World Wars, Brisbane — in common with most of the ‘Western’ world — embraced a self-conscious modernity: the by-product of nineteenth century industrialisation, imperialism, liberalism and emergent consumerism. Reflected in material and intellectual culture from high art to daily lifestyle, and from the home to the workplace, modernity became the catch-cry and call-sign of the interwar years.

The publication in 1995 of Joan Kerr's Heritage: The National Women's Art Book renewed public interest in the work of three Aboriginal women from the Boulia area of North Western Queensland: Kalboori Youngi, Nora Nathan and Linda Craigie. These women produced small-scale sculptural groups carved from two types of soft, local stone: mullenduddy, a sort of compressed clay; and kopi, a white talc-like material.

Many places in North Queensland have colourful and interesting histories. Stories about the individuals associated with certain places have become part of the regional mythology; however, as errors and misconceptions creep into family tales and journalists' accounts, the mistakes are sometimes woven into broader historical accounts. This article, based on material gathered over a decade, sets out to correct some myths about the recorded history of China Camp, Bloomfield and the life of Robert Baird.

Professor J.J. Stable, a pioneer of Australian literature at the University of Queensland, recognised the sporadic development of the state's literary culture when he observed in 1924 that, while Queensland writing was ‘not what it was’: ‘There is however very evident in Queensland at the present time a revival of interest in all matters appertaining to art and literature.’ The moment for this optimistic reflection was, aptly, the Brisbane centenary celebrations. While predominantly a metropolitan event, it was not without ramifications for regional Queensland writers. Like the state and national commemorations of 1959 and 1988, it began to recognise local talent and Queensland cultural achievement in a cohesive and semi-official manner.