Flinders Book Club

Dr Molly Murn 
Poet & author
MCreatArts '14
PhD(CreatArts) '22

Heart of the Grass Tree

When Pearl’s grandmother Nell dies unexpectedly, Pearl and her family – mother Diana, sister Lucy – return to Kangaroo Island to mourn and farewell her. Each of them knew Nell intimately but differently, and each woman must reckon with Nell’s passing in her own way. But Nell had secrets, too.

As Pearl, Diana and Lucy interrogate their feelings about the island, Pearl starts to pull together the scraps Nell left behind and unearths a connection to the island’s early history, of the early European sealers and their first contact with the Ngarrindjeri people.

Pearl’s deepening connection to their history, the island’s history, grounds her, and will ultimately bring the women back to each other.

Dr Molly Murn (MCreatArts ’14) is a South Australian poet and author. She holds a Bachelor of Dance, a Master of Creative Arts, and has a PhD in Creative Writing from Flinders University. Molly is also the manager of Matilda Bookshop in the Adelaide Hills. Her debut novel, Heart of the Grass Tree, was shortlisted for the Debut Fiction Indie Book Awards 2020, and the MUD literary Prize for best new fiction. Molly’s poetry has appeared in various places, such as Overland, Transnational Literature and Social Alternatives.

Dr Gay Lynch
Adjunct Lecturer
PhD(EHLT) '09

Unsettled

The unsettled South Australian frontier near Mount Gambier is a strange and difficult place for a Galway family trying to make sense of their new world. Rosanna and brother Skelly long to escape.

Their older brother Edwin races against poets in steeplechases and schemes over cattle, carts and cards to get ahead. They are all half in love with a visiting priest and a disturbing Irish play about their ancestors.

When she goes to work at a nearby station, Rosanna is caught up in a string of events including, throwing a horserace, the allure of a visiting actor, violent threats to her Boandik friends, and the wreck of the Admella, that lead to a reckoning with the land, its histories, its religions and its ancient and recent cultures.

Dr Gay Lynch PhD(EHLT) ’09 is a PhD Creative Writing graduate and is an adjunct lecturer at Flinders University. Gay writes and researches essays, novels, academic papers, book reviews and short stories on unceded Boonwurrung land.

Alan Tucker
Author
BA(Hons) ’74
DipEd '75

Battlefield: One Boy’s War

Barry Blacker is obsessed with being a soldier. He is desperate to join the army like his older brother Jack, who is in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. In the meantime he practises drills on the family farm in Cowra, and spies on the Japanese prisoners in the camp nearby. When some of the prisoners escape, Barry’s attempt to be a hero has devastating consequences.

A moving, thought-provoking and vividly told novel, based on a true story.

Alan Tucker (BA(Hons)’74, DipEd ’75) is a Flinders University graduate focused on writing historical fiction on Australian history such as the bombing of Darwin, Cyclone Tracy and atomic testing in South Australia. In 2003 Alan won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for his book Iron in the Blood.

Associate Prof Natalie Harkin
Research Fellow & activist-poet

Archival Poetics

Archival Poetics is an embodied reckoning with the State’s colonial archive and those traumatic, contested and buried episodes of history that inevitably return to haunt us; a way of knowing and being in the world that carries us lovingly back and forward and back again toward something else restorative/transformed/ honouring/ just. 

Family records at the heart of this work highlight policy measures targeting Aboriginal girls for removal into indentured domestic labour, and trigger questions on surveillance, representation and agency. This is a shared story; a decolonising project through poetic refusal, resistance and memory-making. It is our memory in the blood, and it does not always flow easily.

Associate Professor Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman, activist-poet and Research Fellow at Flinders University. Natalie’s words have been installed and projected in exhibitions comprising text-object-video projection, including collaboration with the Unbound Collective. She is a member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network, the Australian Dictionary of Biography's Indigenous Working Party, and the State Records/State Library's inaugural Aboriginal Reference Group. Archival Poetics won the 2020 Kate Challis RAKA Award and the John Bray Poetry Award at the 2020 SA Festival Awards.

Dr Gillian Dooley 
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
BA(Hons) ’96
PhD(EHLT) '01

Matthew Flinders: The Man Behind the Map

In Matthew Flinders: The Man Behind the Map Gillian Dooley looks to the primary sources to discover Flinders as a friend; a son, a brother, a father and a husband; as a writer, a researcher, a reader, and a musician - and above all as a romantic scientist.

The Man behind the Map will be launched on Thursday 26 May at the SA Maritime Museum as part of the SA History Festival. Read more.  

Dr Gillian Dooley (BA(Hons) ’96, PhD(EHLT) ’01) is a graduate and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English at Flinders University. She is the co-editor of Matthew Flinders' Private Journal (2005) and has published several articles on Matthew Flinders. Gillian is also a journal editor and the author of books and articles on literary subjects from Jane Austen to J.M. Coetzee.

Prof Peter Monteath
Professor of History

Four Years in a Red Coat

Before the Japanese Imperial Navy Air Service staged its surprise strike on Pearl Harbor, Miyakatsu Koike lived the privileged life of a Japanese expatriate in the Dutch East Indies. Four Years in a Red Coat presents for the first time in English translation Miyakatsu Koike's wartime diary. It is a keenly observed record of his arrest, his hellish voyage to distant South Australia, his endurance of years in the Loveday Internment Camp, and his return ultimately to a war-ravaged homeland. More than that, it is a testament to one man's calmly stoic triumph over sustained adversity.

Peter Monteath is a Professor of History at Flinders University and the Vice President and Executive Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. He writes about various aspects of European and Australian history, with a particular interest in things German. Peter curates the website www.lovedaylives.com, which provides insight into the history of Loveday and the biographies of those who spent time there.

On Thursday 19 May Professor Monteath will be giving a talk, Germans in Loveday Internment Camp for the SA History Festival. Read more. 

Dr Romain Fathi
Senior History Lecturer

Our Corner of the Somme
Australia at Villers-Bretonneux

Before the First World War, Villers-Bretonneux was a lively and flourishing French town dedicated to textiles and agriculture. By the time of the Armistice, it had been largely destroyed, and half its population had fled or died. From March to August 1918, Villers-Bretonneux formed part of an active front line, where Australian troops were heavily involved. As a result, it holds a significant place in Australian history.

Our Corner of the Somme provides an eye-opening analysis of the memorialisation of Australia's role on the Western Front and the Anzac mythology that so heavily contributes to Australians' understanding of themselves.

Dr Romain Fathi is a Senior Lecturer in History at Flinders University. Romain’s primary research interests are the First World War, war commemorations and Australian identity. He also has an interest in the history of public health, the Red Cross movement and the treatment of human remains in conflicts. In 2018 Romain was named South Australia’s Historian of the Year by the History Council of South Australia.