In 2013, Professor Patrick Buckridge retired after a long career at Griffith University. Patrick was one of a dedicated group of teachers whose enjoyment of disputation became legendary in the School of Humanities. Together, they created a rich and innovative curriculum; individually, they made distinctive contributions to scholarship in their disciplines. In Australian studies, Pat Buckridge worked with Gillian Whitlock, David Carter, Mark Finnane, Stephen Garton and Chilla Bulbeck; and later, as he developed courses in ‘Great Books’, with Belinda McKay. Pat was to become a head of the School of Humanities, and he was the last Dean of that faculty before a restructure saw it disappear.

The imminent death of the study of past literature in Australian universities has been pronounced many times since the 1980s. It seems to have been taking several decades to die, but its time may finally be upon us. When I first joined Griffith Humanities in 1981, the then Head of School, David Saunders, told me that though he might wish it otherwise, the literature of the past would always be studied in universities — if only because there was so much of it and because, like Everest, it was simply ‘there’. I now think he may have been wrong. It is likely enough, in my view, that some — mainly older — people will keep reading, studying and discussing the literary tradition for a long time to come: in reading groups, U3A classes and the like. More about that later. But I doubt if anyone will be doing it in Australian universities for very much longer.

Patrick Buckridge is that rare person — even in the academic world: a true scholar with a deep, sometimes eccentric, passion for ideas. He belongs contentedly to Brisbane while engaging intellectually with the vast world of scholarship in history, language and literature. He has retained his interest in his first love, Renaissance literature, but understands that literature is also here and now, in the society around him. So his studies have extended to Australian writers, Queensland literary history, the history of the book, the history of literary criticism and the nature of readership for literary work. As his May 2013 public lecture demonstrated, he believes in the continued importance of attentive reading as a source of intellectual understanding.

Patrick Buckridge was my teacher when I was an undergraduate student at Griffith University. One year, curator Susan Ostling asked him whether any students were interested in local history research. I volunteered, and Patrick agreed to assess the historical report that I produced. My task was to research and compile, as comprehensively as I could in the time available, a history of the ceramics industry in Ipswich.

Rosa Praed has been claimed as ‘the first Australian-born novelist to achieve a significant international reputation.’ Almost certainly, she was the first Australian-born novelist to be published in the United States, although she was in England by the time her first novel appeared in America in 1883. Of Praed's forty-seven published works, twenty-five appeared in American editions in the three decades from 1883 to 1915, including twenty-four of her thirty-eight novels in more than forty separate editions. In the years either side of the century's turn, she was among the best known Australian writers in America, alongside Louis Becke and Rolf Boldrewood.

In The world republic of letters, Pascale Casanova suggests that an intimate relation between politics and literature is a feature of postcolonial nations because the relative lack of literary capital on the margins prevents the autonomy that is available to writers in the great national literary spaces such as France, England and the United States. The pressing imperatives of post-colonial responsibility certainly pose a particular challenge for contemporary Australian novelists aspiring not just to local distinction, but also access to international markets and a wider reputation in the world republic of letters. In Australia, the writer's aspiration to a wider market share and greater cultural capital has often been construed as a forlorn search for a reliable readership. An established following provides a foundation for the development of a consistent artistic oeuvre, which is in turn able to support the critical topoi of canonisation: promise, originality, development and genius.

Serendipity has always played a role in research, and today the availability of digitised newspapers through Trove offers new opportunities for chance discoveries. A couple of years ago, Glenn R. Cooke — then Research Curator of Queensland Heritage at the Queensland Art Gallery — referred me to a snippet from The Queenslander of 15 October 1892, where the Melbourne correspondent writes:

In 1934, the editor of the Courier-Mail’s women's page, Winifred Moore, reflected on the growth and importance of women's clubs in Queensland in the early decades of the twentieth century. Moore herself had been involved in community organisations since she took up her career in journalism during World War I. She was a foundation member of the National Parks Association, a member of the Press Association, the Queensland Women's Electoral league (QWEL) and the Lyceum Club. Many of her contemporaries shared what she called ‘the club habit’, a habit that had enabled women to ‘find their tongues in public assemblies’ in the decades after they achieved the vote (Courier-Mail, 8 February 1934, 16). As she wrote her column, Moore may have been thinking of a particular woman: her friend Irene Longman (1877–1964), who had been elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1929, only to lose her seat at the next election.

In bumper-to-bumper traffic along the Pacific Motorway at dusk, I edge south past the Logan Road exit towards the Gold Coast. Vehicles moving easily north have already put their headlights on. Flying foxes are massing against the darkening sky. These native megabats will find their way to food using their sharp eyes and sense of smell. As I watch, I am reminded of the microbats of another hemisphere. Those blind bats had prompted Thomas Nagel's famous paper, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’

In the 29 novels by Arthur Upfield in which he is the protagonist, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) is often referred to as a product of Queensland. We are reminded repeatedly of his origins, first in North Queensland (where he was born and raised on a mission) and then Brisbane (where he was educated, and where he and his wife live in the suburb of Banyo – though this city location is never described). But my main purpose here is to explore Upfield's representation of ‘place’, specifically in the three Queensland-focused Bony novels, and the related, recurrent discourses and tropes commonly associated with environmental writing and eco-criticism: wilderness, toxicity, pastoral, dwelling and particularly environmental crisis, eruption and catastrophe.

As many musicians would attest, small ensemble collaboration provides very special rewards. Chamber music performance has rarely been a viable full-time career aspiration, but this has not deterred many Australians from devoting huge amounts of energy to its survival. However, as a flexible medium with interchangeable personnel and diverse performance contexts, it is difficult to find a ‘through line’ that links these disparate activities over time. As an amalgam of disparate entities, chamber music is rarely accorded the same recognition as larger ensembles such as orchestras, choirs, bands and theatrical-operatic companies.