Terror Australis : Dark Tales from Down Under

Bunyips, boundary riders and bush-lurkers: just some of the horrors that populate these tales of the Antipodean uncanny.

The Australian weird tradition may be a short one, but it is as varied and rich as anything you will find in the Old World.

Many of these tales, from the likes of Marcus Clarke, Sophie Osmond, Ernest Favenc and Mary Fortune, are written by strangers in a new land.

Traditional European elements of the weird tale appear in new forms, or are moulded afresh to a harsh new environment. The haunted house is no longer a rambling manor, but an abandoned shanty or rundown homestead; the ancient wood, the lair of evils and creatures from folklore, becomes the oppressively hot, fly-infested bush; and the windswept moor is the empty, endless Australian outback with its blood-red sands and emaciated myall trees.

The anthology also includes Aboriginal voices, providing a very different take on the landscape and its horrors.