Christmas in fiction – a time when families reunite and love blossoms, when evil is overcome and tragedy is averted. Cruelty and revenge are offset by heroism and forgiveness, and constancy in love is rewarded. But in Australia Christmas stories are also marked by fire and flood, cyclone and drought, and the perils of isolation. Cattle drovers find themselves stuck in a gumtree, a pitiless squatter learns the cost of cruelty, and love’s ‘cooee’ is heard as far away as London. All the drama of nature and humanity is vividly recounted in this collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian Christmas stories.

Professor Imelda Whelehan has researched and published in the fields of women’s writing, feminism, popular culture and literary adaptations and is currently the Dean of Higher Research at the Australian National University. 

To Be Continuedis an Australian Research Council funded project, led by Associate Professor Katherine Bode, that has unearthed an astonishing bibliographic index and full-text archive of fiction in Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1955.

Imelda Whelehan, Introduction: Ghosts of Australian Christmases Past

A. J. Boyd, Christmas Eve in a Gum Tree

Bush Naturalist, Linlarra Station and the Christmas Day I Spent There

Ada Cambridge, A Christmas Message

Catherine Martin, Clare's Christmas Eve

Salian Muir, The Bushman's Revenge: An Australian Christmas Story

Frederick Sydney Wilson, Uncle Tatbury's Ghost: An Australian Christmas Story