ISSN 2981-894X (Online), ISSN 2203-5362 (Print)
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FOREWORD
ARTICLES
ANDREW MONTANA, “A Remarkable Woman”: The Elusive Case of Madame Hortense de Heuse Hazard, Sculptor and Art Collector, Europe, Britain, America and Melbourne
With a residential tenure in Melbourne, Australia, that lasted merely five years between 1882 and 1887, the Belgian born transnational artist and collector Madame Hortense de Heuse Hazard lived mainly in anonymity until her death. This new research reveals that Madame Hazard, belatedly deemed a remarkable woman by the press, had married into a wealthy American family in Paris in the 1860s, studied sculpture in Rome and exhibited in Italy, France, America and Britain. A collector of art and antiquities, she possessed antique objects whose provenance purportedly dates back to the collections of Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte and his descendants, and which caused sensation and speculation when they appeared for auction in Melbourne in 1887. Yet her talent as a sculptor remains unrecognised today, and only one of her many marble figurative works, redolent, arguably, of her personal and somewhat tragic biography, appears to have survived in Australia. This article brings the elusive Madame Hazard to light.
Keywords: Nineteenth-century women sculptors, art collections, antiquarianism, transnational artists, French provenance, print media
PAULINE GEORGELIN, French Australian Connections at the 1880–1881 Melbourne International Exhibition
The Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880–1881 provided a unique backdrop for transnational encounters between the major industrialised nations in a context of friendly rivalry. This article investigates the French participation in the Exhibition. France’s key aims were to seek out new markets for its exports and to push for the establishment of direct trade links between Australia and France, bringing economic benefits and a stronger regional presence. However, this article argues, the pursuit of this economic goal was necessarily accompanied by strengthening cordial relationships and projecting positive images. France brought to Melbourne an astonishing array of goods, chosen to represent the best France could offer to world markets and to signal French prestige and craftsmanship. The Exhibition provided a singular opportunity for connections and mutual discovery between French and Australian people. This article examines the French participation at the Exhibition as an event around which mutual perceptions were formed and expressed, adding to our knowledge of connections between France and the colony of Victoria in the late nineteenth century.
Keywords: Melbourne, French Australian Relations, Royal Exhibition Building, Jules Belcour
FREYA DAVIES-ARDILL, Poetry, Politics and Protest: Responses to Nuclear Weapons Testing from Mā’ohi nui (French Polynesia) to Australia
The intersection of poetry, politics and protest in response to nuclear testing in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia) and Australia is illustrative of a rich tapestry of relation and resistance extending across the Anglo-Franco Pacific sphere—one that transcends both linguistic and geographical barriers. Notably, women and Indigenous people have been at the forefront of anti-nuclear movements across Oceania, as well as in Australia. The present article seeks to link together various literary, militant and political strands of anti-nuclearism across the Pacific region, drawing particularly on relationships, legacies and solidarities between Mā’ohi Nui and Australia. It begins by outlining the racist underpinnings and continuing impacts of nuclear weapons tests conducted in Maralinga, Moruroa and Fangataufa, and across the broader Pacific region. The second section examines political and grassroots campaigns of resistance, particularly in response to French nuclear tests, and introduces several anti-nuclear literary interventions, including early contributions of settler allyship such as Australian author Dymphna Cusack’s 1955 play Pacific Paradise. The article then moves to further contextualise the trans-Pacific—and notably trans-Indigenous—literary solidarities that arose alongside the movement for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific from the 1970s, touching on work by Ri-M̧ajeļ (Marshallese) poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Kanak author Déwé Gorodé and Tahitian/Mā’ohi author Chantal Spitz. The final section of the article offers a close comparative analysis of two short stories, “China Blue” and “Césure” by Tahitian/Mā’ohi author Rai Chaze, alongside the poem “Thunder Raining Poison” by Indigenous Australian Yankunytjatjara author Ali Cobby Eckermann.
Keywords: Nuclear colonialism, France-Australia relations, Trans-Indigenous literature, Oceanian literature, anti-nuclear literature
DOCUMENTS, NOTES AND REVIEWS
THE EDITORS: The Ivan Barko Award 2024
THE EDITORS: Festival Ciels Australs: Littérature et cultures d’Australie (13–15 November 2026)
MEL O’CALLAGHAN and JANE GILMOUR: French-Australian Encounters Number 12: Interview with Mel O’Callaghan, Australian Artist and Recipient of One of Five Inaugural French Australian Cultural Exchange Foundation Resonance grants
EDWARD DUYKER: Lapérouse in Fiction: Apocrypha, Pantomime and Other Literature
JOHN RAMSLAND: Obituary: Kenneth Raymond Dutton, Emeritus, Professor of French, The University of Newcastle, New South Wales (1938–2026)
JEAN FORNASIERO: Obituary: Peter Sutherland Hambly, FAHA (1935–2025)
ELAINE LEWIS: Sophie Masson’s French Books
JANE GILMOUR: Book Review: Sheryle Bagwell, Letter from Provence: Two Women, Two Centuries, and a Village House in France
JOHN EMERSON: Book Note: Jean-Paul Delamotte, L’Écrivain du Parc de Saint-Cloud
ELAINE LEWIS: Bibliographical Notes