 Title page for The Golden Lake (1891) | |
| Author | Carlton Dawe |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | . |
| Publisher | Trischler, London |
Publication date | 1891 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 284 |
The Golden Lake (1891) is a science fiction adventure novel by Australian author Carlton Dawe. It was subtitled: "The Marvellous History of a Journey Through the Great Lone Land of Australia". [1]
Two adventurers, Dick Hardwicke and Archibald Martesque, use a map bequeathed by a dying explorer to discover a golden lake hidden in the Australian interior.
In her essay "Fabulating the Australian Desert: Australia's Lost Race Romances, 1890-1908", (Philament No. 3, April 2004) Melissa Bellanta includes this novel under the general category of Australian "lost race romances" along with Francis Hogan's The Lost Explorer (1890), Ernest Favenc's The Secret of the Australian Desert (1896) and Marooned on Australia (1896), John David Hennessey's An Australian Bush Track (1896), George Firth Scott's The Last Lemurian (1898), Rosa Praed's Fugitive Anne (1902), Alexander MacDonald's The Lost Explorers (1906) and William Sylvester Walker's The Silver Queen (1908). [2]
Writing in The Brisbane Courier at the time of the book's publication, a reviewer stated: "This work of "The Golden Lake" is Rider Haggard, out-haggarded. It is a bold feat of stand and deliver, every faculty but credulity, and it deserves corresponding approbation to find in these latter days of scepticism, a writer and a publisher with coinage sufficient to count upon a remunerative quantity of readers. The imagination of the bushmen is sufficiently fertile to produce stiff yarns, but for a sequence of glaring improbabilities commend us to the idealist who has distorted every canon of bush law to create a bush legend." [3]
A reviewer in The Sydney Morning Herald was equally as scathing: "To be entirely devoid of imagination is bad, although the persons so circumstanced are generally ignorant of their misfortune; but it is not so bad as to possess an imagination which submits to no control - a fancy which, once fairly started, revels in a phantasmagoria of incredibilities." [4]
Joseph Thomson was a Scottish geologist and explorer who played an important part in the Scramble for Africa. Thomson's gazelle and Thomson's Falls, Nyahururu, are named after him. Excelling as an explorer rather than an exact scientist, he avoided confrontations among his porters or with indigenous peoples, neither killing any native nor losing any of his men to violence. His motto is often quoted to be "He who goes gently, goes safely; he who goes safely, goes far."
Ernest Favenc was an explorer of Australia, a journalist, author of verse, novels and short stories, and an historian.
James Hume Nisbet was a Scottish-born novelist and artist. Many of his thrillers are set in Australia.
The 1899 British Isles tour to Australia was the fourth rugby union tour by a British Isles team and the second to Australia; though the first tour in 1888 was a private venture, making the 1899 tour the first official undertaking of Australia. It is retrospectively classed as one of the British Lions tours, as the Lions naming convention was not adopted until 1950.
The Queensland Open originally called the Queensland Championships and also known as the Queensland Lawn Tennis Championships or Queensland Grass Court Championships and the Queensland State Championships was a tennis tournament played in Brisbane, Australia, from 1888 to 1994. The event was part of the Grand Prix tennis circuit and WTA Tour and was played originally on outdoor grass courts then outdoor and indoor hard courts.
Raymond Longford was a prolific Australian film director, writer, producer, and actor during the silent era. Longford was a major director of the silent film era of the Australian cinema. He formed a production team with Lottie Lyell. His contributions to Australian cinema with his ongoing collaborations with Lyell, including The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and The Blue Mountains Mystery (1921), prompted the Australian Film Institute's AFI Raymond Longford Award, inaugurated in 1968, to be named in his honour.
Alfred Dampier was an English-born actor-manager and playwright, active in Australia.
John McMaster was an alderman and mayor of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. He was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland and a Member of the Legislative Council of Queensland.
James Hipwood was an Australian politician. He was an alderman on the Brisbane Municipal Council from 1884 to 1897, and mayor of Brisbane, Queensland from 1886 to 1887.
Alfred Rolfe, real name Alfred Roker, was an Australian stage and film director and actor, best known for being the son-in-law of the celebrated actor-manager Alfred Dampier, with whom he appeared frequently on stage, and for his prolific output as a director during Australia's silent era, including Captain Midnight, the Bush King (1911), Captain Starlight, or Gentleman of the Road (1911) and The Hero of the Dardanelles (1915). Only one of his films as director survives today.
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The Life and Adventures of John Vane, the Notorious Australian Bushranger is a 1910 Australian silent film about the bushranger John Vane, who was a member of Ben Hall's gang. It was the first dramatic film from Charles Cozens Spencer who was a key producer of early Australian movies.
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John Allworth Clark (1846-1932) was mayor of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in 1891.
George Henry Firth Scott, was a Scottish-born Australian journalist and writer, generally known as G. Firth Scott. He was the son of George Firth Scott, Land Commissioner and Emma Elizabeth. He was born about 1862 at Golspie, County Sutherland, Scotland.
Colonist was a general cargo and passenger schooner built in 1861 at Dumbarton Scotland by Denny & Rankine. It spent nearly 30 years plying the Western Pacific-based out of Sydney. It wrecked and later re-floated on the remote Elizabeth Reef 550 km from New South Wales, as well as being involved in the gold rushes. Its master was murdered before it was finally involved in a collision in Sydney Harbour, in which it was sunk.
Belshazzar is a historical novel by H. Rider Haggard set in Ancient Babylon. It was written in 1924, and was just finished at the time of his death.
William Sidney Murphy was a newspaper proprietor and member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly.
John Brunton was a Scottish scenic artist who worked in theatres in Britain and Australia. Brunton was brought to Australia in 1886 by the theatrical partnership of Williamson, Garner and Musgrove. From about the mid-1890s he worked on productions by Bland Holt, known for his spectacular touring productions of melodramas and pantomimes. Brunton died in July 1909 in Sydney. He was the father of the popular actress, Dorothy Brunton.