Vampires in the Sunburnt Country:

Vampires in the Sunburnt Country: Adapting Vampire Gothic to the Australian landscape by Jason Nahrung Submission to the Faculty of Creative Industr...
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Vampires in the Sunburnt Country: Adapting Vampire Gothic to the Australian landscape

by Jason Nahrung

Submission to the Faculty of Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Research) in Creative Writing, 2007

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Keywords

Vampire, Gothic, fiction, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Mudrooroo, Master of the Ghost Dreaming, Australian fiction, horror, Dani Cavallaro, Ken Gelder, Gina Wisker, David Stevens, Edmund Burke, darkness, earth, blood, ruins, Milissa Deitz, Tracy Ryan, Jackie French, Keri Arthur, Outback Vampires, Thirst, Bloodlust

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Abstract

I first became enamoured with vampire Gothic after reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula in high school, but gradually became dissatisfied with the Australian adaptations of the sub-genre. In looking for examples of Australian vampire Gothic, a survey of more than 50 short stories, 23 novels and five movies made by Australians reveals fewer than half were set in an identifiably Australian setting. Even fewer make use of three key, landscape-related tropes of vampire Gothic – darkness, earth and ruins. Why are so few Australian vampire stories set in Australia? In what ways can the metaphorical elements of vampire Gothic be applied to the Sunburnt Country? This paper seeks to answer these questions by examining examples of Australian vampire narratives, including film. Particular attention is given to Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming series which, more than any other Australian novel, succeeds in manipulating and subverting the tropes of vampire Gothic. The process of adaptation of vampire Gothic to the Australian environment, both natural and man-made, is also a core concern of my own novel, Vampires’ Bane, which uses earth, darkness and a modern permutation of ruins to explore its metaphorical intentions. Through examining previous works and through my own creative process, Vampires’ Bane, I argue that Australia’s growing urbanisation can be juxtaposed against the vampire-hostile natural environment to enhance the tropes of vampire Gothic, and make Australia a suitable home for narratives that explore the ongoing evolution of Count Dracula and his many-faceted descendants.

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Table of Contents

Keywords ………………………………………………………………………… i Abstract ……………………………………………………………………….…. ii Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………... iii Statement of authorship ………………………………………………………….. iv Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………….…….. v Introduction (including methodology) ……………………………………………. 1 Literature review ………………………………………………………………….. 8 Case study 1: Vampires in Australia – An Overview ………………………..…..15 Case study 2: Mudrooroo’s vampire series ……………………………………... 27 Reflective case study: Vampires’ Bane …………………………....................... . 32 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….…….. 40 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………….…... 42 Appendix 1: annotated bibliography of Australian vampire stories ……………… 49 Vampires’ Bane …………………………………………………………………… 59

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Statement of Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other institution. The thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signed: ……………………………………………………

Dated: ……………………………………………………..

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Acknowledgments

I would not have been able to undertake this degree were it not being offered feefree through Queensland University of Technology. I am indebted to my supervisors, Dr Nike Bourke and Craig Bolland, for their generosity, guidance and patience. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the other members of my cohort, in particular Louise Cusack and Rowena Lindquist, for their comprehensive edits of my MS, and Valerie Parv for giving me a much cooler name for the eventual work. Vampires’ Bane/Blood Memory has been a project in the making for several years and numerous people have offered support and critiques, for which I am extremely grateful. My deepest gratitude also goes to my “MA widow”, Mil Clayton, for giving me the space and time to devote to this project.

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Introduction I saw the man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall (Stoker 1985, 471).

I remember this passage as being the moment in Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which all my childhood interests in myths and legends crystallised into what was to become something of an obsession. I was sixteen, at home in the farmhouse bedroom, with a late-night storm scraping the branches of a tree across the window. This is the moment when Jonathan Harker can be left in no doubt at all as to the supernatural nature of his host; when the vampire is made real.

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The Dracula passage is also a wonderful example of the stereotypical Gothic landscape: a ruined castle perched on a cliff, “bathed in soft yellow moonlight”. This incident is the epitome of Edmund Burke’s sublime, often evoked by landscape and in particular mountains – that moment of astonishment in which all thought and sensation are suspended save for “some degree of horror”. Burke says the sublime is composed of terror, obscurity and power, and all three are present here (Sage 1990, 33-38). The sublime is one of three key concepts underpinning the functioning of the Gothic. The other two are Freud’s theory of the uncanny and Todorov’s concept of the fantastic. For Freud, the uncanny is anything that “arouses dread and creeping horror” (cited in Sage 1990, 76-77) and is strongly linked to what he termed the unheimlich, or ‘unhomely’, in which something familiar is made unfamiliar, causing fear. Todorov divided the literature of the Gothic into two streams – the uncanny, in which supernatural events could be rationalised within the laws of nature, and the marvellous, in which they were simply accepted as being outside of nature. His concern was with the effect these events had on the viewer, terming that point of confusion or fear “the fantastic” (Todorov 1973, 25, 41). It is the sublime and its direct relationship to the power of landscape which most informs this paper, although the theories of Freud and Todorov will be referenced where appropriate.

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Originally published 1897. All references to Dracula refer to this 1985 edition of Stoker’s book unless otherwise stated.

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When I decided to write horror stories set in Australia, the challenge was to translate the sublime elements of this quintessential scene from Dracula to a landscape that, at first glance, does not seem to support direct comparison. Where in Australia would a vampire find a crumbling castle overlooking an abyss upon which to exercise his or her lizard-like prowess? Herein lies the problem that has plagued Australian writers of Gothic fiction since colonial times: the apparent absence of the key elements of the Gothic setting.

Vampire Gothic The vampire of European2 folklore is “a bloodsucking creature … that leaves its burial place at night … to drink the blood of humans. By daybreak it must return to its grave or to a coffin filled with its native earth” (Britannica 2007). Dracula’s impact on me is mirrored in the wider community, with the Encyclopaedia Britannica noting Stoker’s “ ‘undead’ villain from Transylvania, became the representative type of vampire” (ibid). Some of the traits exhibited by Dracula that have persisted in contemporary depictions of vampires include vulnerabilities to sunshine, garlic, holy symbols and running water, and death by decapitation, sunlight or wooden stake through the heart. Dracula not only provides the epitome of the Gothic vampire, but also the quintessential Gothic vampire setting characterised by darkness, ruins and underground spaces.

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As this paper draws on the Western Gothic tradition, it restricts itself to Western vampire mythology.

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In her masters thesis, Kim Wilkins offers a strict historical definition of Gothic fiction as the “literature of terror which was in vogue in England between 1764 and 1820” (2000, 3). This definition excludes the evolution of Gothic fiction to the present day, but Wilkins does provide a key set of Gothic conventions by which to judge texts and films under consideration. Amongst recurring tropes such as incest, ghosts and burial alive are several geographic tropes – historical settings, ruined castles and abbeys, underground spaces – which help to define the Gothic setting. Wilkins also supplies a caveat for the term Gothic, noting it is polysemous: the Gothic tag is “indifferently applied to any piece of writing which employs even one of the conventions associated with the genre” (2000, 3). David Stevens acknowledges the historical definition but also, as Wilkins also notes, sees the Gothic literary genre as a “tendency” (Stevens 2000, 31) reaching at least as far back as Wilkins’ starting point (Castle of Otranto, 1764) and extending to the present day. For the purposes of this paper, vampire Gothic is defined as a tendency in post-1764 fiction, and films, involving supernatural blooddrinkers within the Western tradition, that draws on established Gothic tropes. Stevens also highlights “certain generic preferences” in Gothic fiction: ruins, dungeons, darkness (2000, 54).

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Darkness is an important, if not essential, element of Gothic fiction, as Wilkins later acknowledges3, and especially vampire fiction given the vampire’s traditional vulnerability to sunlight. It is the root of Burke’s sublime. While the historical settings mentioned by Wilkins are too nebulous, lending themselves to an entire paper on their own given the geographic and temporal possibilities, ruins and underground spaces are clearly key signifiers of the Gothic. While there are many elements in the Gothic mode, this paper looks at how the interrelated, setting-specific elements of ruins, underground spaces and darkness have been used to evoke the Gothic in Australian vampire fiction and film, and to what purpose. The inclusion of films is important to this study because, as Stevens noted, in the 1900s vampire stories were championed on the big screen, and television and film continue to be fertile mediums for vampire Gothic. With Nosferatu (1922, featuring the rodent-like undead of Max Schreck) and particularly 1931’s Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi) and the iconic Hammer Horror releases of the 1950s to ’70s, the vampire became established as a perennial favourite of the cinema (Clarens cited in Grixti 1989, 19). Movies and fiction have continually exploited the seemingly unending (and much documented) metaphorical mutability of the vampire, no doubt a key to the creature’s persistent appearance in popular culture. To discuss how vampire Gothic and in particular its Gothic landscape

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Wilkins acknowledges that her list of conventions is not absolute, and makes mention of darkness as an aid to secrecy and obfuscation (2000, 10). She also notes, “It is from the gothic novel that the word

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signifiers can be adapted to the Australian setting, I will look at how Australian writers have approached the task previously4, with special emphasis on Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming series. The literature review includes a comparative analysis of previous works, reading for the uses of Australian land and landscapes within the vampire Gothic mode. I then explore the application of vampire Gothic and in particular Gothic landscape in my own manuscript, Vampires’ Bane. This use of creative work as applied research conforms to the methodology of performative research, defined by Carole Gray as: firstly research which is initiated in practice, where questions, problems, challenges are identified and formed by the needs of practice and practitioners; and secondly that the research strategy is carried out through practice, using predominantly methodologies and specific methods familiar to us as practitioners (cited in Haseman 2006, 8).

The challenge of applying vampire Gothic, with its roots in literature more than 200 years old, to contemporary writing, entails identification of the form, a comparative analysis of its previous applications, and the practice-led strategy of enacting and exploring that research through the writing of the novel. As Haseman asserts, the manuscript “not only expresses the research, but in that expression becomes the research itself” (Haseman 2006, 6). The process of adaptation I employ can be used to look at not only the tropes

began to be associated with the supernatural, terror and darkness” (2000, 24). 4 Until 31 December, 2006.

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of the Gothic genre and their application to current literature, but also offers an analysis of vampire Gothic in previous similar work by Australian writers, of which few such assessments have been made. This process will be explored in the reflective case study, which shows how I have sought to adapt the Gothic landscape that first enamoured the literature to me through the likes of Dracula into my own Australian vampire story, Vampires’ Bane.

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Literature Review, Part One: Vampire Gothic – ruins, underground spaces, darkness In this literature review, I will first explore the key vampire Gothic elements – ruins, underground spaces and darkness – and then offer a comparative analysis of their use in previous Australian vampire texts and movies. It will be shown that these elements are under-utilised in the body of work to date, and I will offer my manuscript, Vampires’ Bane, as a case study of how these elements can be used in a contemporary Australian vampire Gothic story. Ruins, such as Dracula’s castle and Carfax Abbey in Dracula, are a pervasive setting in the Gothic, offering a location anchored to past sins and glories where the psychological drama can be played out in isolation. Similarly, underground locations such as crypts and tunnels, offer isolation and mystery. Darkness is a pervasive element of the Gothic in both physical and metaphorical terms – dark conditions of the human experience such as incest and murder are

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played out against ill-lit landscapes, for instance. Darkness is an inherent characteristic of both ruins and underground spaces.

Ruins The absence of historically significant ruins – leftovers from a previous, greater civilisation – was problematic for early Australian Gothic writers. In a well-quoted criticism, Frederick Sinnett in 1856 writes: No Australian author can hope to extricate his hero or heroine, however pressing the emergency may be, by means of a spring panel and subterranean passage, or such like relics of feudal barons, and refuges of modern novelists, and the offspring of their imagination. There may be plenty of dilapidated buildings, but not one the dilapidation of which is sufficiently venerable by age, to tempt the wandering footsteps of the most arrant parvenu of a ghost that ever walked by night ( cited in Blackford, et al 1999, 34).

However, the role of ruins in the Gothic has changed with time, and darkness can now be found in much more seemingly mundane landscapes; dilapidation does afford sanctuary to the Undead and the nefarious. Gina Wisker argues that Gothic architecture, the term arising in the eighteenth century, originally challenged the notion of a safe middle-class home. These buildings featured: discomfort, coldness, extravagance, unclear boundaries between the inside and the outside, and, above all, sprawling structures suggestive of lack of control over one’s space. In using outlandish castles and maze-like mansions, narratives of darkness challenge the bourgeois ideal of the sheltering home (2005, 85).

As society has changed, and the vampire changed with it, so too have the

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settings for horror. This change, as noted by Wisker, is evident in some of the Australian vampire stories under consideration here. Wisker notes about changing settings for horror: In a number of late-twentieth-century texts, the heir of Gothic castles and mansions is the bourgeois house itself… Echoing corridors, dark towers, misty graveyards, crumbling abbeys and labyrinthian woods are no longer indispensable stage sets. Suburban districts and houses, as demonstrated, for example, by John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), can prove just as daunting (2005, 85-86).5

Wisker’s bourgeois home has also been supplemented to some measure by the corporate vampire: the penthouse is the new citadel of darkness for the well-todo movie vampires of Blade (1998) and The Hunger (1983). The isolated manor on the outskirts of a major city remains a popular base for the undead in Underworld (2003) and Kindred: The Embraced (1996), while basements, caves and sewers remain popular haunts for the dispossessed: Stephen Dedman’s vampire clan lives in a manor while the rodent-faced nosferatu inhabit the sewers in Shadows Bite (2001); a child vampire lord faces its final showdown with Anita Blake in an underground complex in Guilty Pleasures (1993); one of Mudrooroo’s colonial series is entitled Underground (1999), with much of the action taking place in a cave complex. Peeps (2006) uses abandoned warehouses and subway tunnels as lairs for the junkie-like vampires. The Lost Boys’ (1987) vampires live in a cavern under the beachside town of Santa Carla; the vampires of television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996-

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Wisker’s examples are primarily American, and I also draw on American films, given the absence of a body of Australian product and the prevalence of American product in the Australian market.

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2003) inhabit crypts, drug dens and abandoned churches, while vampire Spike is the flatmate from hell when he shares space in suburban homes with both Xander and Buffy. While Gothic literature enjoys its shattered stone buildings surrounded by isolating wilderness, Cavallaro identifies cities as a retreat for the Undead. (Cities) both ancient and modern, repeatedly stand out as some of the most intriguing of dark places. This is largely due to their contradictory status: they are constructs and, to this extent, foster the illusion that their planners and builders can control their growth; at the same time, they have an almost organic way of developing according to their own rhythms and of creating pockets of mystery and invisibility which are well beyond the control of their inhabitants (2002, 32).

The city, as both hiding place and food supply, is a vampire’s natural habitat. On face value, the urban environment seems at odds with the landscape of ruined castles and abbeys, but as Cavallaro and Wisker note, they offer replacements settings every bit as remote and forbidding, especially when wrapped in darkness. After all, the paragon of Western vampires, Dracula, on moving to London from solitary Transylvania, found an isolated haven in the wreck of Carfax Abbey.

Darkness Cavallaro identifies darkness as its own space in which displacement and disorientation make a fertile ground for horror, an abode of “dismal apparitions and abject creatures” (2002, 27). Darkness can be, she says, a place of torment and mystery, insanity and corruption; the forbidden; a locked room concealing taboos,

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mysteries and crimes; the absurd. Darkness is very much a part of the obfuscation Burke identified as being important to mystery and the sublime (Stevens 2000, 54). With the sexually predatory and “evil” nature of the vampire, it is no surprise that it is, stereotypically at least, most at home in the night when its powers are at their peak. As Stoker notes, “His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day” (1985, 287). One of the most enduring tropes of vampire lore is the vampire’s vulnerability to the sun. While Stoker’s Dracula walked the streets of London in the day, the author stressed the vampire’s relative powerlessness during daylight hours (1985, 287), and others have followed suit: Blade’s (1998) titular vampire halfbreed is a daywalker possessing vampiric powers and its full-blood vampires are able to tolerate limited exposure thanks to sunscreen; the Kindred: The Embraced (1996) television series, unlike the roleplaying game Vampire the Masquerade on which it is based, also gave vampires the ability to walk in daylight if they had recently eaten; a character in King’s Salem’s Lot is able to operate in daylight while completely covered, as is Mudrooroo’s Amelia. Whitley Strieber’s vampires in The Hunger (1982) are day-walkers and retain a measure of their psychic powers and superior physical strength, but they still prefer to hunt at night to avoid discovery. If cities are, as Cavallaro suggests, “some of the most intriguing of dark places”, then Australia has its share. Not only does the nation now offer sufficiently large and growing population centres along the east coast for a monster to hide in plain sight, it boasts a preponderance of small, dispersed settlements open to domination, as in Salem’s Lot, and offers plenty of space – darkness – both along the

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habited east coast and in the sparsely populated interior. That the urban centres are, to varying extents, largely surrounded by the vastness of the Australian countryside, they can virtually be seen as isolated castles within their own right, each with their own mouldering towers and shadowed dungeons.

Underground spaces Underground spaces – cellars, dungeons, tunnels and cave complexes – function in much the same way as ruins in the Gothic mode: as an isolated, dark, obscured setting for the sublime to unfold. They are of particular interest in vampire Gothic, given the vampire’s vulnerability to sunlight, and also the tradition that dictates the vampire needs to sleep in its native soil to survive. Stoker’s Dracula has 50 boxes of Transylvanian earth shipped to London to provide plentiful hiding places, for instance; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain (a 3500-year-old vampire of noble blood) wears earth in his shoes to allow him to walk in daylight. Stephen King’s Barlow has earth shipped to his haunt in Salem’s Lot (1983), and in Night Flier (1997), King likewise has his vampire sleeping in earth in the belly of an aircraft. However, as Gael Grossman (2001, 50) points out in her examination of young adult vampire fiction, by and large the need for home soil has been left behind with the need for a coffin; all that is needed now is a place out of the sun, whether a penthouse, a sewer or simply a hole in the ground. The vampire is the ultimate parasite, perhaps: wherever it lays its hat is its home. Or perhaps the vampire in

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more recent incarnations is a more mobile creature, carrying its heritage in its blood rather than in a box of earth. Traditional tropes such as vulnerability to running water, holy symbols, mirrors and garlic have also been forsaken as vampirism has become a lifestyle choice, rather than a Christianity-based battle between good and evil. Darryl Jones (2002, 71) credits Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles (beginning with Interview with the Vampire in 1976) as a leader in this trend. Also of note is The Lost Boys’ tag line: “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.” The template of abilities so powerfully established by Stoker has been altered with the mutation of the vampire from aristocratic invader (Dracula) to addict (The Addiction), anti-hero (Rice’s Lestat), wayward child (The Lost Boys), female liberationist (Nancy A Collin’s Sonja Blue) and erotic cipher (Anita Blake). Does the Gothic still have a role in vampire literature? And if so, how has it been used in the apparently most unlikely setting, Australia?

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Case Study One: Vampires in Australia – an overview

While Australia boasts a surfeit of earth and darkness, ruins – certainly those with any extended history – are, as Sinnett noted, somewhat harder to find. The “strangeness” of the Australian land, compared to the European and especially English “norm” of the Gothic, has posed problems for some authors of Australian Gothic since the days of early colonisation. To quote Rosa Praed, in her 1891 story The Bunyip: Everyone who has lived in Australia has heard of the bunyip. It is the one respectable flesh-curdling horror of which Australia can boast. The old world has her tales of ghouls and vampire, of Lorelei, spook, and pixie, but Australia has nothing but her bunyip (Blackford, et al 1999, 13).

For the European vampire, colonial Australia – the Sunburnt Country – is a most inhospitable land, providing none of the trappings to which it was accustomed:

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sedentary populations within which it could move undetected, a long association with the land, and the buildings to prove it. While some writers, as noted by Russell Blackford (1999, 4), have turned to the strangeness (to European eyes) and vastness of the bush for their Gothic inspiration, this places limitations on the vampire: a fundamentally urban creature due to its dependence on blood supplies. When looking for vampire Gothic landscapes, Australian writers have repeatedly looked overseas. Australia has not spawned a sizeable body of homegrown, home-based vampiric literature. Although we have a crop of writers like Robert Hood, Stephen Dedman, Gary Crew, Victor Kelleher and Terry Dowling who are known for their work in the horror genre, we have no Kim Newman or Anne Rice to whom we can point as a writer of Australian vampire, as distinct from horror, literature. The majority of Australian vampire fiction identified by this study (see appendix 1) is either set overseas or anchored within a generic or anonymous urban setting, or a nominally Australian urban setting where the name of the city or suburb could easily be substituted for another. Of fifty-odd short stories written between 1946 and 2006, only 19 are identifiably placed in an Australian setting. Of the twenty-three novels written between 1886 and 2006, twelve are set in Australia; seven of these are part of two series. We might have a “share”, as noted by Ken Gelder (Reading the Vampire 1994, x), of vampire narratives, but it is largely set elsewhere (even one of his examples, the cannibalistic White Maniac short story by Waif Wander, is set in

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London).

Short stories Of the nineteen short stories clearly set in Australia, few make use of Gothic landscape signifiers. Rather, the majority play with the mythology of the vampire separated from its Gothic foundations with the exception of darkness; the vampire’s need for night remains largely unchanged. Almost all occur in an urban or suburban environment – usually a house or apartment or perhaps a café – where the Gothic possibilities of the urban environment – ruined buildings, shadowed chambers, the isolation of deserted alleys and streets – tend to be neglected. There are some notable exceptions, however. Simon Brown’s short story, “With Clouds at Our Feet”, (Dann 1999, 402433), starts out on a dairy farm on the Murrumbidgee run by two half-vampire brothers before they drive to Sydney to meet their vampire father. The city’s darkness is the site of temptation to forsake the brothers’ moral high ground and feed on humans rather than cattle. The landscape is bucolic; it is the city where the Gothic is manifest in a juxtaposition of the rural idyll against the decadent city. Bill Congreve’s Epiphanies of Blood (1998) collects six of his vampirethemed stories, all of which are set in Australia6.

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“The Mullet that Screwed John West”, despite occurring mostly in Hell, is nominally Australian because the main character, Masters, references Australian places, fauna and wine.

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Congreve uses a number of Gothic landscape signifiers in his stories, most notably in “The Turing Test”. Here, a scene where a vampire’s powers are proven occurs in a storeroom in a viaduct pylon at night. The silent darkness of the night and the confining underground-like stone-walled room (an active ruin or historical setting at the very least) work to enact the sublime. Probably the most overtly Australian in setting is “Boy”, in which vampires are blood drinkers with mind powers who can exist in the sunshine. The premise here, further explained and resolved in a companion story, “I Am My Father’s Daughter”, is that the vampire father hunts his own children for the thrill. In “Boy”, this hunt occurs in the wild coastal jungle of Far North Queensland, but moves to a suburban setting for “I Am My Father’s Daughter”. In “Boy”, terrain serves as an isolating factor, but Gothic landscape signifiers are largely absent. The idea of vampires with mind powers, safe in the sun, is also carried in “The Death of Heroes”, the conclusion of which plays out in a rocky outback ravine. The story travels from a suburban house to this bush setting, where a dead vampire is buried under stones and becomes “part” of the desert. This can be seen as a twist on the idea of earth as sacred ground, a sign of the invader putting down roots: for the nomadic vampire Joanne, the grave becomes an anchor, a place she will visit and feel comfortable, by dint of her son’s body being a part of the soil. The Gothic sense of isolation and the sense of the sublime are undermined by Joanne feeling equally at home in the bush as in the city (though constrained by her continuing need for blood). She loves the desert mornings and feels secure under the sky: “It was as easy to hide out here as it was in the teeming cities.” However, the Gothic, as in “Boy”

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and “I Am My Father’s Daughter”, is eroded by having key scenes occur in daytime. The sixth of Congreve’s stories, “Red Ambrosia”, is a suburban tale offering little in the way of Gothic landscape beyond the confinement of the suburban home, complete with cellar. This analysis suggests that Australian short vampire stories have largely abandoned the Gothic landscape, and indeed the Australian landscape, and there is a similar trend for long fiction to also head offshore.

Novels About one half of the Australian vampire novels surveyed for this paper feature overseas settings. Stephen Dedman, one of the most prolific Australian writers of vampire stories, sets his short vampire fiction overseas, and his vampire novel, Shadows Bite (2001), takes place in Los Angeles. Mel Keegan’s Nocturne (2004), a gay-themed ebook available only from the publisher’s website, is set in 1892 London. Scott Westerfeld7 sets his young adult-targeted Peeps (2006) in New York. Kelleher rewrote Dracula for his Into the Dark (1999) and kept the European backdrop. The number of novel-length vampire stories by Australians set in Australia reduces even further when those in series are considered as one story. The most notable for its Gothic content is Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming series, which will be discussed in detail later.

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Westerfeld is an American writer who has permanent resident status in Australia and thus is considered an Australian writer.

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Another writer to publish a series with vampires as main characters is Melbourne’s Keri Arthur, whose work is firmly embedded in the booming supernatural romance genre. Arthur’s most recent book, for consideration in this paper, is 2006’s Full Moon Rising, the first of a series called The Guardians. It concerns a set of vampire-werewolf (dhampire) twins who work for a government agency tasked with apprehending/assassinating nonhuman criminals in a near-future Australia. The focus is not on the Gothic, however, as her characters pursue the mystery of supernatural clones, but on the erotic, with the story taking place during the week of a full moon when the werewolf aspect of her heroine, Riley, is under the libidinous influence of the moon. In one scene Riley and her allies are holed up in an isolated farm house, but the Gothic is quickly expelled: “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” says Riley, to which her brother replies, “That means squat in this day and age” (Arthur 2006, 145). Arthur has also published a second vampire series, Nikki and Michael, again set in Melbourne and with the emphasis on the relationship between the male and female leads. Book one of the series, Dancing with the Devil (2001), opens with private detective and psychic Nikki tracking a teenager into an abandoned house famed for being haunted. The classic Gothic trope of a haunting is given no further consideration, however. Gothic landscape elements are utilised, however, in the form of gloomy, ruined buildings and a mine shaft to raise tension through obscurity and isolation. In Vamp (1997), Tracy Ryan enlists the metaphor of the vampire to attack the

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Church and psychoanalysis. The story follows Tracy, a separated mother, who meets the vampire Sam in the asylum where both are being treated. Sam attaches herself to Tracy, seducing her into a lesbian relationship and, apparently, killing off anyone who hurts Tracy. Sam does conform to vampire stereotypes: she doesn’t eat food and shuns sunlight; she finds Christian iconography painful, and wears an ankh – the Egyptian sign of eternal life – as an earring. There is a single mention of Sam having earth in pots of incense, and classic vampire tales such as Carmilla and The Hunger are referenced. Set in Perth, the story does have some scenes set at a convict-built building on the shore that could be seen as a ruin, although the scenes that occur there are not as Gothic-inspired as two flashbacks to Sam’s life in an almost fantasyMedieval European wilderness. In these flashbacks, it is winter, and Sam is seduced from her noble family’s isolated, snow-bound castle, and a pre-arranged marriage, by a wandering minstrel who is a vampire. As have so many Australian writers, Ryan has looked overseas for her most strongly drawn Gothic landscape, and in this case, it is a minor element of the story’s backdrop. The vampire also serves as an instrument for social exploration in Bloodlust (1999), by Milissa Deitz. Set in Sydney, the story draws on Sheridan le Fanu’s classic 1871 story Carmilla. Deitz’s Carmilla inhabits a gargoyle-rimmed, overgrown mansion (perhaps more at home in Anne Rice’s New Orleans). Protected by sunscreen and a hat, Carmilla does go out in the daytime, but prefers the night. Though Carmilla is not a pure vampire – she is “the most human of her lineage” (Deitz 1999, 173) – she eats little (usually raw meat), is possessed of

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supernatural strength and powers of mesmerism, and can be killed by a wooden stake through the heart. The book is, Ken Gelder notes (cited in Trigg 2005, 248-249), a “selfconsciously citational piece”, alluding to Gothic works by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Poppy Z Brite and William Blake. For all its citations, the story does not offer the range of vampire Gothic landscape signifiers. Although Carmilla’s rambling home offers a Gothic setting, earth/underground spaces is absent and darkness is almost an aside. Drinking of blood – and the pain, pleasure and trust it entails – is to the fore. In the young adult book In the Blood, Jackie French creates bio-engineered vampires to haunt her post-apocalyptic future Australia. The story follows an outcast technological mutant as she hunts a killer sheltering in isolated rural Utopias, existing under sufferance of the high-tech City. The vampire killer is revealed as having originated from a castle made as a project of Gothic whimsy, and in this structure alone is the darkness and claustrophobic space of the Gothic employed. The castle in French’s book appears to have more in common with the faux castles found in Australia, such as Bli Bli on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast or Kryal Castle at Ballarat, than authentic medieval inspirations. Of the novels considered here, only Mudrooroo and French’s novels spend any serious time outside the urban arena, and French’s characters merely travel through the landscape, which appears largely bucolic, without interacting with it. Land is not an instrument of the sublime in In the Blood. Australian writers of vampire fiction, both short and long, have tended to

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concentrate on the urban reality so easily transposed from that of other Western countries rather than use the natural landscape that has been so effectively, if somewhat stereotypically, plumbed by the Australian movie industry. As such, an opportunity to evoke the sublime through the use of Gothic landscape signifiers has been lost.

Movies Australian films such as Mad Max, The Long Weekend, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Razorback, The Cars That Ate Paris, as well as the relatively recent Wolf Creek and Undead, have exploited the vastness and ‘otherness’ of the Australian environment to evoke, from a white, colonial viewpoint, an atmosphere of the uncanny if not the horrific, even within the isolated environs of a country town. Of the three8 Australian-set, Australian-made vampire movies available, two have tried to emulate the Gothic isolation and sense of sublime to be found in Dracula’s castle, one with more success than the other. Outback Vampires (1987) draws most on vampire Gothic signifiers and offers the greatest representation of Australian land, with scenes set in eucalypt and mallee scrub as a trio drive along an isolated dirt road to an outback rodeo. They are ambushed along the way by a boobytrap, which forces them to seek help at a rundown town. Satirically called Yarralumla (a Canberra suburb and also the name of the Governor-General’s residence, a former homestead), the town has a

8

In Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, the Australian characters travel to Europe to save Dame Edna Everage from a vampire abductor, and thus the film is not considered here.

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population of five and is overlooked by a meatworks and a spooky manor. Exhibiting a strong Rocky Horror Picture Show influence in its campness, the movie does draw on vampire lore: a blood-drinking crow seems to stand in for the more usual bat as vampire spy or familiar; vampires can be killed by stake, decapitation or fire, while the head vampire is a hybrid requiring stabbing with a bone from one of his victims. Sunlight is problematic: the head vampire shies from it inside the house, but is able to function quite ably outside in broad daylight. Garlic and crucifixes have no effect, although garlic bulbs are in evidence in the town and the mayor’s chain of office. The looming house also exhibits Gothic tropes: dark spaces and crawlspaces, a dungeon area and surreally changing rooms and spaces, with suits of armour, cobwebs and bugs, and a stuffed vampire bat, adding to the ambience. Thirst (1979) is a mix of Gothic horror and science fiction. It opens with a young woman awaking in a coffin in a cellar boudoir, which would fit comfortably in a Hammer Horror film. It turns out this scene, and many of those that follow, are part of a hallucinatory program of brainwashing conducted by a cult of blood drinkers trying to indoctrinate the young woman into their number. They believe she is a descendant of one of their great bloodlines, that of infamous blood-drinking countess Elizabeth Bathory, and most of what happens in the film is an elaborate hoax conducted to make her accept this role. As such, it can be seen as an example of Todorov’s uncanny. The woman, Kate, lives in a stone manor in an unnamed city in an unnamed country, though the characters are clearly Australian. She is abducted and

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transported to an isolated research compound reached by dirt road and surrounded by forest. The compound consists of two major facilities: the Gothic residence, filmed at Montsalvat (an artist’s colony begun in 1938 “in the European style”9, also used in other movies including the US-Australian vampire movie Queen of the Damned10), with stone walls, timber floors and candlelit hallways, and the floodlit laboratory/factory in which humans are milked of blood to provide a clean food supply for the cult. This could be seen as being a modern shadow of Dracula’s castle – it is remote with some sense of history, even if lacking in dilapidation and shadows. The cultists show no supernatural qualities other than glowing red eyes before feeding from another human, during which they use fake fangs to open a wound in the throat. As such, they barely qualify as vampires, as opposed to mortal blood drinkers. Scenes of Kate’s torment take place in suitably Gothic surroundings: twisting and misshapen rooms, candlelit manor rooms warmed by a fireplace, twisting stone and steel stairwells. At one stage, Kate escapes through the bush with the help of a doctor, but the apparent sanctuary the scrub offers is soon undermined when they enter an underground bunker, where she finds her lover trussed and being drained of blood. The bush’s isolation again works against her, and its sanctuary is proven false.

9

See http://www.montsalvat.com.au/ (accessed 1 December, 2006) Described in Appendix 1, Queen of the Damned was shot partly in Victoria with the Australian state substituting for American and English settings and thus is not relevant to this paper. 10

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As in Outback Vampires, darkness is little utilised. The third Australian vampire movie is Bloodlust (1991). The vampiric element is small: there are scenes of blood-drinking, somewhat fetishised; the fourth member of the troupe is able to survive multiple penetrations with wooden stakes through the head (but not the heart, presumably); and there is a band of religious zealots staking wrong-doers. The three key “vampires” – Frank (a woman), Lear and Tad – walk around in daylight, eat and drink human food as well as blood, and exhibit neither supernatural powers nor vampiric vulnerabilities. As such, it barely qualifies as being a vampire movie (as opposed to a movie about blood drinkers) and certainly falls short in terms of Gothic landscape signifiers – merely a few abandoned buildings and a farm, little darkness, and no underground spaces. This analysis of Australian vampire stories shows that the Gothic landscape has been largely ignored by Australian writers and under-utilised by Australian filmmakers, with darkness, ruins and underground spaces overlooked in favour of urban environments and overseas locations. While urban environments, with the suburban home and skyscraper replacing the castle/abbey setting and rich in darkness, still offer a sense of the Gothic landscape, they have a generic quality. It seems like a lost opportunity for the Australian landscape’s power to evoke the sublime to be overlooked in vampire Gothic when other genres, and even nonvampire horror movies, have used it so strikingly.

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Case Study Two: Mudrooroo’s vampire series

None of the stories or movies analysed in this paper seems to so purposefully utilise as many elements of the Gothic landscape for narrative effect as does Aboriginal writer Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming series. He has firmly anchored his vampire series in the Australian land, using the classic Gothic trope of vampire as invader in his colonial-era tale of the last remnants of an Aboriginal tribe, led by shamans, seeking to deal with the conquest of their land and the seduction of one of their own by a white, female vampire. Darkness, blood and earth are to the fore. The recognition in Australia of a European invasion, and the rejection of the theory of terra nullius, is a relatively recent phenomenon. As John Scheckter notes, “Before 1980, literature in which Aborigines figure was not so much about them as about the effects upon whites who come into contact with them, so that Aboriginal

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characters function as mirrors reflecting white attitudes” (Scheckter 1998, 124). Mudrooroo, in the three vampire books (The Undying, Underground and The Promised Land) of his four-part Master of the Ghost Dreaming series11, published at the end of the 1990s, effectively addresses this invasion by representing the Aborigines and their magic as the norm and whites as ‘ghosts’. According to Gerry Turcotte: Dracula is one of many Gothic narratives which chill by alerting its readers to the enemy without, whose greatest power is to colonize from within. How fitting, then, that Mudrooroo should seize on this narrative trope and turn it against the invading culture. For Mudrooroo, Australia is filled with spiritual forces, but the ghostly – the otherworldly – is logically identified as a white invading presence, literally from another world (cited in Oboe, 131).

It is in The Undying, the second book of the series, that the vampire Amelia first appears, and her relationship with the earth is quickly established. She comes to Australia aboard the same schooner taken by the Aborigines, the Kore, which is another name for Persephone, of Greek myth: the wife of Hades, lord of the underworld. Persephone spends time both underground and in the surface world. Amelia hunts the Aboriginal tribe, seducing the narrator, George, and finding a strange relationship with Wadawaka. Amelia cannot drink Wadawaka’s blood; born of the sea, his blood is too salty for her taste. She prefers the eucalyptus-tinged blood of the Aborigines.

11

For in-depth discussion of Mudrooroo’s works, see Mongrel Signatures. Robinson and Fraser are discussed in some depth in chapter 7 by Gerry Turcotte.

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Salt is a traditional Western purifying agent and ward against evil (Guiley 1989, 300), so this reinforces Amelia’s supernatural existence and alludes to the evil taint of vampirism found in the earlier, Christian-oriented Gothic works such as Dracula. Amelia, as did Dracula, must carry with her boxes of her native soil in which to sleep, and avoid the sunlight. Underground, the third book of the series, is a transformative one for Amelia. On the verge of insanity, she inhabits a vast cave complex – tying directly to the Gothic signifiers of underground space and darkness – as well as serving, according to Clark (p132), as both an image of a mythological underworld and as a metaphor for the institutional experience of Aborigines. Like Persephone, she rises from her time underground and enters the fourth book, Promised Land, reborn. In Promised Land, Amelia no longer needs her box of native earth, and her insanity likewise has vanished. Her experiences in The Undead and Underground have forged Amelia. In The Promised Land, Amelia’s adaptability is shown by her being able to function in daytime, clad head-to-toe in black and gripped by lassitude. Her vampiric powers are at their height at night, and again this is one of Mudrooroo’s many nods to Dracula, in which Stoker had the vampire walking the streets of London in the daytime, with considerably less protection from the sun than that used by Amelia.

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It is a far stronger Amelia who leaves Australia. She notes in The Promised Land: I came here as a thing limited to my own patch of earth and the darkness of the night. Within her, I gained the power to face the burning blast of the day and freedom from the tyranny of the sun. I was reborn in her depths and will miss her (Mudrooroo 2000, 226).

This is a far cry from Amelia’s comment in The Undying that “this earth, this ground, is alien to me. It is not my earth and the ground here cannot be my resting place. I need my rich loam to survive” (Mudrooroo 1998, 90). As something of a road movie set in colonial Australia, the use of ruins is sidelined in the series, replaced by isolated boats, huts and settlements. Mudrooroo uses the Australian land instead, drawing on the Gothic tropes of terrain to induce a sense of strangeness and isolation – Australia is “the dungeon of the world” and the epitome of Freud’s uncanny (Turcotte cited in Lopez 2005, 103). All of Australia is haunted by ghosts, at least for the Aboriginal characters, while for the whites, and even George, a self-confessed “stranger in a strange land” outside of his native Tasmania, it is a hostile, featureless expanse (Mudrooroo 1998, 17). By grounding his series in the historical setting of Australia’s colonial past, Murdooroo has been able to use the vampire as a symbol of colonisation and invasion as well as a tool to explore the role of the land in shaping the invaders. Underground spaces and darkness, as well as the vampire trope of earth, are all used to great effect, with the trope of ruins being supplanted by necessity with the isolation and sparseness of the land itself. In a contemporary novel, where would the writer find suitably Gothic ruins –

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not just abandoned structures, but ones with links to a previous time in the Gothic mode? Ryan and Congreve both used convict-era buildings in which to site vampiric assignations, but in the main, where ruins have been used (as in Arthur’s Guardians) they have functioned simply as isolated, dark spaces for nefarious deeds to be committed in. The Gothic sensibility, if not the atmosphere, has been abandoned. Can traditional Gothic landscape signifiers still find a metaphoric power in the contemporary vampire Gothic?

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Case Study Three: Vampires’ Bane: A Reflective Case Study

It was dissatisfaction with not finding my own country, and in particular my native land or landscape, depicted in vampire stories, which led in part to my own manuscripts. My first draft of Vampires’ Bane succumbed to stereotypes of the Australian landscape. Even though the outback scenes were set in western Queensland, the terrain depicted was that of far west Queensland and the sandy plains of the Northern Territory rather than the rolling gidgee scrubs and cotton fields of St George. Brisbane was made more Gothic, given overtones of a Tim Burton Batmanesque Gotham or Blade Runner-style Los Angeles rather than a realistic, contemporary feel. This perhaps harks back to Kelso’s assertion that landscape can

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be thought of as how the land should look. As John Scheckter notes, the outback holds a powerful place in the imagination of Australians, despite most having limited experience of it (Scheckter 1998, 11-12). In the second draft, attached to this thesis, the principal action moves to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, but involves road trips to both Brisbane (urban darkness) and Longreach (rural darkness). The Sunshine Coast straddles the divide between country and city, offering both rural and urban environments – a middle ground between the two extremes, as emphasised by the dense population of Brisbane and the sparseness of western Queensland. All of these locations were chosen as a way of invoking the Gothic sense of isolation, even within the urban environment. Whitedale is isolated on the Sunshine Coast in its own economic downturn; Kevin’s petrol station stands alone surrounded by forest; he is isolated geographically in Brisbane, a place he has rarely visited, and socially, being a vampire in a mortal city; Brisbane itself is isolated, a stronghold of life on the edge of a sparse plain, and likewise Longreach/Stonehenge are marooned outposts in a barren plain. Unlike Congreve’s Joanne, the Western vampires are uncomfortable entering this Gothic wasteland, ill-equipped to handle its emptiness and exposure to the biting sun. The earth offers no shelter to them, as it does to Taipan. Ruins, such an iconic Gothic trope, are present in the dying Whitedale, where industry is shutting down and young people are moving to the bigger population centres in search of work. The sugar mill is a husk of iron and rust. The vampires’ factory, with its underground tunnels and chambers, is suitably isolated and

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foreboding on the edge of town and offers hidden spaces for the sublime to be enacted. The rebel vampires use other ruins – primarily abandoned farm houses and sheds – as bases to while away the daylight hours, or invade suburban houses in desperate need of shelter and food. This clearly marks them as existing on the fringes of society. While, in a traditional Gothic story, ruins are often a reminder of what is considered a more enlightened or desirable time (and certainly the long-term residents of Whitedale might well hark back to the days of the functioning sugar mill as the ‘good old days’), here the ruins serve also as a symbol of disenfranchisement: the rebel vampires inhabit both past and present but are able to ‘live’ in neither. I have also bought into the contemporary horror setting outlined by Wisker, upsetting the one-time sanctuary of the suburban home as the site of invasion, and picturing the office tower as a modern-day castle. While Taipan’s gang bring horror into the suburban home, Von Schiller’s organisation occupies high-rises, apartment blocks and underground car parks. Von Schiller’s Brisbane ‘castle’ overlooks the city from behind battlements of concrete. Thanks to modern communication technology and, if pressed, things as simple as tinted windows, the corporate vampires can lead an almost ‘normal’ daytime business existence while still revelling in the night, when their powers are at the fullest. Nosplentyn’s shadow organisation use tunnels under an abandoned swimming pool, but also maintain a modern unit in an apartment complex in the decadent but trendy Fortitude Valley. This is Freud’s uncanny in practice: we might expect monsters – or at least, supernatural ones – to live in the sewers, but what

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about in the apartment next door? Violence, however, is committed ‘underground’ – within the confines of the abandoned swimming pool’s shower block. Moving Vampires’ Bane from outback Queensland to coastal settings was, in some ways, an attempt to generate a stronger resonance with Freud’s uncanny – the unfamiliar vampires in the naturally uncanny outback seemed less effective than locating them in a more familiar semi-urban environment of lonely moonlit roads, misty eucalyptus forests and deserted, windswept beaches. In the 21st century, Australia has become one of the most urbanised countries of the world, with seven-eights of the population statistically described as urban, and about one-third living in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane (Encyclopedia Britannica 2006). While the bush might be expected to house monsters like Praed’s bunyip, to find them close to home is hopefully more unsettling. That the south-east corner of Queensland is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia12 means the arrival and residency of strangers fosters a sense of displacement or unease about the erosion of the status quo – old blood is not just being replaced by new, it is being swamped, and familiar locations are altered by urban development.

12

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures of 7 February, 2003 Queensland in Review, accessed 1 December, 2006 at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Latestproducts/ CF3424B58ECB69C8CA256CC500211FCA?opendocument

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This ties into the English Gothic trope of invasion, where established society and norms were felt to be challenged by the arrival of Europeans of different faith. In the case of Vampires’ Bane, the invading vampire society is European-based, having its roots in Medieval Germany. Darkness remains a powerful trope. I have used it as a mask for evil deeds, such as the murder of Kevin’s father, and the veil under which the supernatural world conducts its business. The absence of darkness is also used, as in the beach scene where the vampires risks injury by swimming in cloudy daytime as they try to live a ‘normal’ life in spite of their unnatural bodies (and/or enlivening eternity with the element of risk it involves). Direct sunlight remains a threat to the vampires, but not as explosively as represented in, say, Hammer Horror movies. While some of Congreve’s vampires are comfortable in the sun, mine are not: the risk imposes deadlines and helps keep the pressure on the characters. Vulnerability to sunlight, to whatever degree, limits the ability of the vampire to belong in the diurnal, mortal world. Kevin and Taipan invade the vampire factory not at night when their adversaries are at their prime, but in the day. The final battle, however, takes place at night when the vampires have free movement and the eyes of the mortal world are turned away, and in the darkness underground, where even the electric lights are rendered unreliable. Kevin is first met at the graveyard in daylight; he ends in the same place, but at night, showing how his world has changed. Other tropes, such as garlic, holy symbols and running water, are abandoned,

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and a stake of any material through the heart is no longer terminal, simply immobilising. Some, such as garlic, were abandoned for being overly anachronistic, while the religious banes were dropped because they are only relevant in a tale of Christianised good versus evil, which is not the focus of Vampires’ Bane. Unlike Mudrooroo, I abandoned the requirement for the vampires to sleep in the earth of their homeland. The decision was made primarily because, in Todorov’s terminology, I wanted the European vampires to be seen more as uncanny than marvellous, and so scientific reasons are given for their extraordinary abilities. Requiring native earth seemed to be too big a root in the supernatural. By contrast, Taipan, even as divorced from his tribal lands as he is, is able to access magical powers through his link to the land or the spirit of the land. In this way, the story’s theme can be seen as the marvelous versus the uncanny; science against spirituality; civilisation versus ‘the primitive’. The Brisbane vampires do not forge a link with the land: they exploit it, but do not feel comfortable outside the urban environment. Their goal is reclaiming land left far behind, a land which in truth no longer exists. This shows how, while my vampires do not need to sleep in their native earth, I have sought to use earth to bring the Australian landscape into play in the Gothic mode – as metaphor and not just backdrop. Earth as a source of power, protection and belonging was the result, with strong political overtones as well. By going literally underground with Taipan, Kevin – like Mudrooroo’s Amelia – is reborn. Kevin is able to access Taipan’s powers, which allow him to defeat Heinrich’s forces. The earth is both a shelter and a nurturer, subverting the Gothic trope of underground spaces as being a scene of threat and dislocation.

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A central theme is the concept of vampire as invader, both culturally and economically. The vampires are purposefully depicted as European in origin, from a knightly order famed for religious/racial invasion (the Teutonic Knights), and as corporate entities. Von Schiller and his nemesis, Rodan, are clearly represented as destructive, consuming forces. The vampire factory has destroyed an Aboriginal bora ring and feeds on the homeless and defenceless for its conversion process, either as product or raw material. The arrival of the vampires in Whitedale literally affects the town’s earth: a lake is polluted, and its Aboriginal heritage is destroyed. The essence of vampire Gothic landscape is maintained through the use of darkness of both environment and spirit, isolation, ruins and underground spaces. The sense of the past overhanging the present is evoked both through the longstanding conflict between the vampire factions and Taipan’s loss of roots. The ruined sugar mill and failed farms suggest a community in transition, if not decay. The battle for purity of blood and sanctity of earth is to the fore, specifically through the internal conflicts of Taipan and Kevin as well as the larger vampiric struggle. Elements of the Australian land – sacred Aboriginal sites, flora and fauna, bushfire season, beaches – are used to either enhance or contrast those classic elements. Vampires’ Bane, which follows, is a modern tale, but its roots can be traced back to the Gothic wellspring identified by Wilkins and others in the Castle of Otranto.

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Conclusion With the continuing urbanisation of Australia and the further evolution of the vampire metaphor, Australia has become a more attractive setting in which to tell vampire stories. The land can be used to enhance the feeling of isolation and menace for characters unused to dry, bright distances. Few creatures of folklore would be more uncomfortable making the road trip into Queensland’s interior than the darkness-dwelling vampire, as shown by Kevin’s road trip to Longreach from Brisbane in Vampires’ Bane. Where Mudrooroo has used the vampire metaphor to explore Australia’s

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colonial past, other writers have found, in the growing urban centres, sufficient darkness to house a vampire culture. By adapting tropes of vampire Gothic such as darkness, ruins and underground spaces, the metaphorical power of these elements can be used in the Australian setting. Earth can take on a spiritual as well as nationalistic or possessive quality, and can be a source of territorial conflict. Ruins take on a less ancient aspect, pointing not necessarily to a long history – if anything, earth does that, at least in an Indigenous context – but to a sense of cultural evolution or devolution, or simply change with its inherent conflicts and nostalgic longings. Darkness is something of a universal metaphor. However, in the Australian bush or outback on a new moon night, the darkness can be an especially effective backdrop for mystery and suspicion, a breeding ground for paranoia and fear of the unknown, especially for those not used to such spaces. Vampires’ Bane shows how, with thoughtful adaptation, Australia can make a fitting backdrop for modern vampire stories, which do not have to abandon the tropes of vampire Gothic to be set here. The displacement of traditional ruins by suburban and inner-city dwellings in vampire Gothic, and the trend for rural decline leaving abandoned, isolated farmhouses in the countryside, Australia is not without its “ruins”. The environment, both natural and manmade, offers darkness and earth aplenty, even within the urban landscape. While a vampire’s home need not be a castle, by adapting these core elements of vampire Gothic landscape, Australia can be made a place where Stoker’s Dracula, or at least his descendants, can feel right at home.

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Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Gelder, Ken, 1994. Reading the Vampire, London New York: Routledge. Gelder, Ken, ed, 2000. The Horror Reader New York: Routledge. Grossman, Gael, 2001, PhD dissertation, The Evolution of the Vampire in Adolescent Fiction, Michigan State University. Grixti, Joseph, 1989. Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction, London: Routledge. Guiley, Rosemary Ellen, 1989. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, New York Oxford: Facts On File. Hamilton, Laurell K, 1993. Guilty Pleasures, London: Hodder Headline. Hanson, Donna Maree, 2005. Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview, Murrumbateman NSW: Aust Speculative Fiction. Harrington, Charles, 1970. Landscape in Australian Fiction: The Rendering of a Human Environment, PhD thesis: Indiana University. Harris, Charlaine, 2001. Dead Until Dark, New York: Ace Books. Harrison, Kim, 2004. Dead Witch Walking, New York: HarperCollins. Heller, Terry, 1997. The Delights of Terror: An Aesthetics of the Tale of Terror, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Jones, Darryl, 2002. Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film, London: Arnold. Keegan, Mel, 2004. Nocturne, Adelaide, South Australia: DreamCraft Multimedia. Kelleher, Victor, 1999. Into the Dark, Ringwood, Victoria: Viking. Keogh, Susan, 1989. Land, Landscape and “Such Is Life”. Southerly, 49(1): 54-63. Kilgour, Maggie, 1995. The Rise of the Gothic Novel, London: Routledge. King, Stephen, 1983. Salem’s Lot, London: William Heinemann/Octopus Books. Krimmer, Sally, Lawson, Alan, eds, 1980. Barbara Baynton. St Lucia Qld: University of Queensland Press.

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Lamia, 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite . Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica. Lopez, Alfred J, ed, 2005. Postcolonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire, Albany: State University of New York Press. Markidis, A, ed, 1994. Deeds of Doom, Surry Hills NSW: Galley Press Publishing. Martin, George RR, 1989. Fevre Dream, London: VGSF. Mills, Alice, ed, 1999. Seriously Weird: Papers on the Grotesque, New York: P.Lang. Mudrooroo, 1991. Master of the Ghost Dreaming, Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson. Mudrooroo, 1998. The Undying, Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson. Mudrooroo, 1999. Underground. Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson. Mudrooroo, 2000. The Promised Land, Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson Mulvey-Roberts, Marie, 1998. The Handbook to Gothic Literature, Houndmills, England: Macmillan. Oboe, Annalisa, ed, 2003. Mongrel Signatures: Reflections on the Work of Mudrooroo, Amsterdam New York, New York: Rodopi. Punter, David, 1996. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day, New York: Longman. Punter, David; Byron, Glennis, eds, 2004. The Gothic, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rice, Anne, 1976. Interview with the Vampire, New York: Knopf Ryan, Tracy, 1997. Vamp, South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Sage, Victor, c1990. The Gothick Novel: A Casebook, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Scheckter, John, 1998. The Australian Novel 1830-1980: A Thematic Introduction, New York, New York: P.Lang. Stevens, David, 2000. The Gothic Tradition, Cambridge New York: Cambridge

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University Press. Stewart, Gordon Neil, ed, 1978. Australian Stories of Horror and Suspense from the Early Days, Sydney: Australasian Book Society. Stoker, Bram, 1985. Dracula, Harmondsworth Middlesex England: Puffin Books. Strieber, Whitley, 1982. The Hunger, London: Transworld. Todorov, T, 1973. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University. Trigg, Stephanie, ed, 2005. Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Turcotte, Gerry, 1991. Peripheral Fear: A Comparative Study of Australian and English-Canadian Gothic Fiction, PhD Thesis: University of Sydney. Tymn, Marshall B, 1981. Horror Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide, New York London: Bowker. Vampire, 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite . Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica. Wander, Waif, 1912. The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale, http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/whtmanic.htm (26.11.06). Wannam, Bill, 1983. Australian Horror Stories, South Yarra Vic: Currey O'Neil Ross. Westerfeld, Scott, 2006. Peeps, Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin. Williams, Ian Kennedy, 2005. Re-Igniting the Gothic: Contemporary Drama in the Classic Mode, MA Thesis, Kelvin Grove: QUT. Wilkins, Kim, 2000. The Resurrectionists, MA Thesis, St Lucia: University of Queensland. Wilkins, Kim, 2005. Giants of the Frost, PhD Thesis, St Lucia: University of Queensland. Wisker, Gina, 2005. Horror Fiction: An Introduction, New York: Continuum. Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, The Saint-Germain Cycle, first published 1978 (Hotel Transylvania).

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Movies and television programs

The Addiction, 1995. Directed by Abel Ferrara. Stars Lili Taylor and Christopher Walken. [VHS] Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, 1974. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Stars Barry Crocker, Barry Humphreys and Donald Pleasance. [VHS] Blade, 1998. Directed by Stephen Norrington. Starring Wesley Snipes and Stephen Dorff. New Line Cinema. [DVD] Bloodlust, 1992, Directed by Jon Hewitt and Richard Wolstencroft. Stars Jane Stuart Wallace, Kelly Chapman and Robert James O’Neill. Windhover Productions. [VHS] Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1996-2003. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. Created by Joss Whedon. Twentieth Century Fox. [DVD television series] From the movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992. Directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui. Starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer. [DVD] The Cars That Ate Paris, 1974. Directed by Peter Weir. Starring John Meillon and Terry Camilleri. Shock. [DVD] Dracula: Prince of Darkness, 1963. Directed by Terence Fisher. Starring Christopher Lee and Barbara Shelly. Hammer Film Productions. [DVD, Universal] Forever Knight, 1992-94. Directed by Michael Levine. Starring Geraint Wyn Davies. Colombia Tristar. [DVD television series] From the movie, Forever Knight, 1989. Directed by Farhad Mann. Starring Rick Springfield and John Kapelos. New World Pictures. [VHS] The Hunger, 1983. Directed by Tony Scott. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. Warner Bros. [DVD] Kindred: The Embraced, 1996. Created by John Leekley, from the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, White Wolf. Starring C. Thomas Howell and Mark Frankel. Artisan Home Entertainment. [DVD television series] The Long Weekend, 1978. Directed by Colin Eggleston. Starring John Hargreaves and Briony Behets. Shock. [DVD] The Lost Boys, 1987. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Starring Jason Patric and Keifer Sutherland. Warner Bros. [DVD]

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Mad Max, 1979. Directed by George Miller. Starring Mel Gibson and Joanne Samuel. Roadshow. [DVD] Outback Vampires, 1987. Directed by Colin Eggleston. Stars Richard Morgan, Angela Kennedy and Brett Climo. Somserset Films. [VHS] Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1976. Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Rachel Roberts and Vivean Gray. Shock [DVD] Queen of the Damned, 2002. Directed by Michael Rymer. Stars Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend. Los Angeles: Warner. [DVD] Razorback, 1983. Directed by Russell Mulcahy. Starring Gregory Harrison and Arkie Whiteley. Warner. [VHS] Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975. Directed by Jim Sharman. Starring Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon. 20th Century Fox. [DVD] Stephen King’s The Night Flier, 1997. Directed by Mark Pavia. Starring Miguel Ferrer and Julie Entwisle. New Line Cinema. [DVD] Thirst, 1979, directed by Roy Hardy. Stars Chantal Contouri and Shirley Cameron. FG Films. [DVD, Umbrella] Undead, 2003. Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig. Starring Felicity Mason and Mungo McKay. AV Channel. [DVD] Underworld, 2003. Directed by Len Wiseman. Starring Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman. Subterranean Productions. [DVD] Ultraviolet, 1998. Directed by Joe Ahearne. Starring Jack Davenport and Susannah Harker. World Productions. [DVD television mini-series] Wolf Creek, 2005. Directed by Greg McLean. Starring John Jarratt and Cassandra Magrath. Roadshow. [DVD]

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Appendix: Annotated bibliography of vampire stories by Australians to 31 December, 2006 Short fiction Baranay, Inez, 2004. “My Transylvanian Cousin”, Best Stories Under the Sun, eds: Michael Wilding and David Myers, Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press. : A Gold Coast based story in which Vlad arrives from Transylvania to offer a rellie the kiss of eternal life, and so take her out of the humdrum life of being a writer. The city serves as a backdrop to the seduction of their waiter and the passing of the gift to an unquestioning narrator. Blackford, Russell, 2003. “Smoke City”, Gathering the Bones: Thirty-Four Original Stories From the World’s Masters of Horror, eds: Jack Dann, Ramsay Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Pymble, New South Wales: Voyager. : a story with cyberpunk overtones in which the governments of the world unite to cull the barely tolerated vampires in their midst, but some go down harder than others. Brown, Simon, 2001. “With Clouds at Our Feet”, Dreaming Down Under, Dann, Jack, and Webb, Janeen, eds, New York: Tor. : Dairy-farming half-vampire brothers face their vampiric nature on a visit to the city with their human-hunting father. Bursztynski, Sue, 2003. “Bytepals”, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 2/2 (August). : a Melbourne high school student invites her vampire penpal over – as an email attachment. Alas, vampirism is a virus… Butler, H., 1999. “Just 50 Words”, The Advertiser 13 February, Weekend (p.9). : As the title suggests, a submission to a newspaper wanting 50-word stories, in which a sated vampire comes home to his graveyard. Chandler, A. Bertram, 1949. “Position Line”, New Worlds Science Fiction no.4 : no details available. Congreve, Bill, 1998. “Boy”, Epiphanies of Blood: Tales of Desperation and Thirst, Parramatta NSW: MirrorDanse Books. : a vampire hunts his son and a private detective on the tropical coast of Queensland __________, “Turing Test”, ibid. : more human than human… can it apply to the undead as well? __________, “I Am My Father’s Daughter”, ibid.

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: a PI is hired to find a man’s runaway daughter, but no one is telling the truth. The story serves as a conclusion, of sorts, to “Boy”. __________, “Red Ambrosia”, ibid. : a vampire prepares to move on from his suburban haven, but first he has to cover his tracks by suicide __________, “The Mullet That Screwed John West”, ibid. : a surreal tale involving a blood-drinking appendage, in which a reporter goes to Hell for an exclusive, and gets taken in, hook, line and sinker. __________, “The Death of Heroes”, ibid. : a mother tries to make a family for her boys, if only the neighbour would leave her alone. It ends in the dirt; blood is spilled. For some, there can be no happy endings. Cox, Robert, 1999. “The Grandmaster's Last Crusade”, Aurealis: Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction no.24 (pp.75-85) (nationality uncertain). : A comedic travelogue in Malta recounted by a vampire’s familiar as they assist a Crusader vampire to achieve his final rest. De Bortoli, Simon, 2001. “Street-Wise Sucker”, The Advertiser, 17 January. : a lacklustre tale in which a guy is turned into a vampire over lunch at Glenelg. Dedman, Stephen, 2005. “The Dance That Everyone Must Do”, Never Seen By Waking Eyes - Dedman, Stephen, Ohio, United States of America (USA): Infrapress (pp.85-92). : A 1940s pied piper puts a vampiric slant on an old tale as he gives a Jewhunting Nazi a lesson in occupied Denmark. __________, “The Facts of Dr Van Helsing’s Case”, ibid, (pp151-162). : delving into Van Helsing’s childhood, with a detour to the US and the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee Creek __________, “The Ghoul Goes West”, ibid. (pp.107-117). : Dracula’s Quincy Morris gets a lesson in vampire slaying in America’s Wild West. __________, “Never Seen By Waking Eyes”, ibid, (pp.196-221). : This Alice probably shouldn’t show up in looking glasses at all, as she tells of her encounter with Lewis Carroll __________, “A Sentiment Open to Doubt”, ibid, (pp.49-60). : Malaysian vampire myths are utilised in the conservation fight by an unusual eco-warrior. __________, “Waste Land”, ibid, (pp.33-36). : There’s an I Am Legend overtone as vampire myths are expounded by humans-in-hiding in Undead-occupied Europe.

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Dubois, Robert, 1997. “Requiem for an Editor”, The Australian Writers' Journal, v7 No2, (spring-summer). : a rather dull, mercifully short tale of a South Australian vampire writer who takes revenge on the Melbourne editor who rejects his short stories Egan, Greg, 1998. “Mind Vampires”, Matilda at the Speed of Light: An Anthology of Australian Science Fiction, ed: Damien Broderick, North Ryde, NSW: Sirius : an investigator faces a vampire clutch who have infested a US girls boarding house. Flinthart, Dirk, 2004. “The Flatmate From Hell”, Encounters, eds: Maxine McArthur and Donna Maree Hanson, CSFG Publishing. : A vampire moves into the cellar room and gives the skinheads next door their comeuppance. He’s a Gypsy, and in his mind, the skins wear jackboots. Harland, Richard, 2004. “The Love-Vampires of Transylvania”, Aurealis: Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction no.33/34/35 (pp.182-197). : an extract from Harland’s book, The Black Crusade. Here the party meet a group of vampires who believe it is more divine to give than to receive. Harland, Richard, 2005. “The Souvenir”, Encounters, McArthur, Maxine, Hanson, Donna Maree, eds, Canberra: CSFG Publishing. : tourists in a Transylvanian safari park are looking in all the wrong places for the elusive vampire. Hemming, N. K., 1952. “Last of the Rocketeers”, Thrills Incorporated no.20 (March). Hoge, Robert, 2003. “The Vampires Poodles of War”, Antipodean SF13 no. 62, August-September. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20030801/www.antisf.com/stories/story 06.htm (20 December, 2006). : Caesar lies dead, but it is a sign of a far more covert conspiracy utilising time travel and undead canines. Hood, Robert, 2005. “In the Service of the Flesh”, Aurealis: Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction no.36 (pp.45-55). : more zombie than vampire, perhaps, but the question of immortality arises as religious door-knockers are given a new perspective on the body of Christ… yummy.

13

Is an online magazine with back issues archived at the National Library and accessible, as at 1 December, 2006, at http://www.antisf.com/

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Isle, Sue, 2003. “Catbones”, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 1/5 (Feb). : a procurer of bodies has her business affected when someone – or some thing – starts killing people, and a vampire, in her neighbourhood. One for pet lovers, perhaps. Isle, Sue, 1994. “Kill Me Once”, Alien Shores: An Anthology of Australian Science Fiction, eds: Peter McNamara and Margaret Winch, North Adelaide, SA: Aphelion Publications. : a doctor finds her patient has the cure for what ails her, even as his vampiric nature makes her diagnosis somewhat awkward. Kellings, Ashlei, 1992. “Paradise Discarded”, Aurealis: Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction no.8 (pp.60-67). : A vampiric Lucifer recruits a new body for a fallen angel. Lunn, Richard, 1987. “Giselle’s Admirer”, Storyteller: Short Stories by Australian Writers, No2. : A vampire becomes obsessed with his victim, to the detriment of both. Set in a vague Euro-fantasy world and redolent in Victorian style. McCreadie, Christie, 2006. “Harrison”, Antipodean SF no.101 October-November. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20061101/www.antisf.com/stordex.html (20 December, 2006). : a vampires lures her prey to her chamber. A rose is a rose by any other name, even when it is bait. McMullen, Sean, 1998. “Rule of the People”, Aurealis: Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction no.20-21 (pp.43-61). : Where the gods walk the streets of Melbourne, 1865, being transformed by their experience in the colony. Among them walks the raptor Julia, who owes her long, long life to absorbing the lifeblood of vampires. This is the extent of the vampiric content. Nahrung, Jason (as Jay d’Argo), 2003. “Night Watch”, Elsewhere: An Anthology of Incredible Places, Barry, Michael ed, Canberra: CSFG Publishing. : there are vampires and there are pretenders in a vampire enclave off the coast of Queenland; it’s knowing the difference that counts. Nahrung, Jason, 2002. “Prime Cuts”, Antipodean SF no.56 December. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20021230/antipodeansf.com/stordex.htm (20 December, 2006). : A meeting of blood drinkers in a supermarket goes badly for one when he meets the real deal.

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Nisbet, Hume, 1900. “The Vampire Maid”, Stories Weird and Wonderful, F.V. White: London. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602481.txt (17 December, 2006). : A weary artist finds sanctuary in an isolate Cumbrian cottage, only to be preyed upon the landlady’s vampire daughter. Parry, Glyn, 2003. “Invisible Girl”, Invisible Girl Stories, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press. : Melody and Rudy are teenagers in love and on the run, heading for Bali after the death of a vampire. That man who kissed Melody on the neck four years ago: he was a vampire, wasn’t he? He must have been, because that stake through the heart sure killed him. Of course, it’d kill anyone, wouldn’t it? Patrice, Helen, 1998. “Hunters”, Four W no.9 (pp.33-39). : A self-absorbed yuppie runs into a former conquest at a nightclub to find she’s a lot different to what he remembers. For his sins, she turns him into a vampire, but when he revels in his new nature, stronger punishment is called for. Phillips, Emma, 1998. “Whether You Believe Me”, Lies, All Lies, eds: Lauren Bamberger et al, University of Western Australia. : An Australian vampire tells his lover the truth of his being. A little bit like Interview with the Vampire, minus all the interesting bits. Pitchforth, Richard, 2003. “Vampire Express”, Antipodean SF no.61 June-July. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20030701/www.antisf.com/stordex.htm (20 December, 2006). : An answer is offered for ye olde formula of exponentially increasing vampire populations based on the contagion of one bite. Robson, Barbara, 2003. “Living Wage”, Antipodean SF no.64 September-October. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20030923/www.antisf.com/stordex.htm (20 December, 2006). : Vampires put in a convincing wage claim. Sherrington, Paul, 2006. “Bloodletting”, Antipodean SF no.94 March-April. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20060401/www.antisf.com/stordex.html (20 December, 2006). : A man with blood disease finds a vampire offers a treatment better than any hospital. Stephenson, Robert N., 2004. “Desires of the Hunted”, We Would Be Heroes: and other stories, Stephenson, Robert N. Blackwood, South Australia: Altair Australia Books and Magellan Books (pp.141-149).

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: nanotech and wetwear offer new modes of vampiric immortality. Sussex, Lucy, 1990. “God and Her Black Sense of Humour”, My Lady Tongue and Other Tales, Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia. : in which a feminist reporter finds two heroines in the form of vampire sisters who thrive on the creative juices of men. Twaddle, Ron, 1983. “Confessions of a Neck Man”, Quadrant vol.27 no.6 June (pp.58-59). : no details available. Walters, Trent, 2004. “Dracula Makes House Calls”, Antipodean SF no.71 AprilMay. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20040415/www.antisf.com/stordex.htm (20 December, 2006). : Obscure, comedic turn about a worker coming home early to find his partner apparently enjoying the ministrations of a vampire in an upstairs room. Wander, Waif, 1912. The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale, http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/whtmanic.htm (29 December, 2006) : a quasi vampire story set in 1858 London. Westwood, Kim, 2005. “Tripping Over the Light Fantastic”, Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Congreve, Bill, Marquardt, Michelle, eds, Parramatta NSW: MirrorDanse Books (originally published 2004, Orb #6) : a potential dancer finds the price asked by the instructors is a little too high – and a little too red. Wilder, Cherry, 2003. “Finishing School”, Gathering the Bones: Thirty-Four Original Stories From the World's Masters of Horror, eds Dann, Jack; Campbell, Ramsay; Etchison, Dennis Pymble, New South Wales : Voyager (pp.281-291). : The late Wilder, a New Zealander who spent much of her life in Australia and Germany, provides a story about a 20-year-old vampire sent to a German girls finishing school where initiation is a Harkering and Trad Vamp describes the classes and décor. Whitley, George, 1946. “And Not in Peace”, Famous Fantastic Mysteries vol.8 no.2 December. : no details available.

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Novels

Arthur, Keri, 2002. Chasing the Shadows, Canon City, Colorado, USA: ImaJinn Books : Third book in Nikki and Michael series. Arthur, Keri, 2001. Dancing with the Devil, Canon City, Colorado, USA: ImaJinn Books. : Vampire romance set in a thinly drawn Melbourne introducing Nikki and Michael. : Nikki is a psychic detective who finds herself falling for the vampire Michael who, like her, is trying to bring a rogue vampire to justice. But is the enemy of my enemy truly my lover? Arthur, Keri, 2006. Full Moon Rising, New York, New York, USA: Bantam Spectra. : Book 1 of the Guardians series. Riley is part werewolf, part vampire, on the trail of her missing brother, like her an operative in a shadowy organisation meant to protect society from paranormals, and vice versa. An erotic action tale. Arthur, Keri, 2001. Hearts in Darkness, Canon City, Colorado, USA: ImaJinn Books : Continuing the story of Nikki and Michael. Arthur, Keri, 2004. Kiss the Night Goodbye, Canon City, Colorado, USA: ImaJinn Books: Book 4 of Nikki and Michael.

Dedman, Stephen, 2001. Shadows Bite, New York: Tor : Dedman pits his magician and stunt man against a family of vampires in LA. Deitz, Milissa, 1999. Bloodlust, Milsons Point, New South Wales: Random House. : A Sydney student falls hard for a vampire who finds in him her perfect blood-drinking soulmate… or so she thinks. D'Ettut, 2000. Vampire Cities, Sydney London Turkey: Abbott Bentley. : not really a vampire book, though a shadowy group called the Vampire Club seem to be pulling strings in the background. To what purpose, however, remains unclear throughout the course of this travelogue roughly centred around Sydney’s 2000 Olympics.

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French, Jackie, 2001. In the Blood, Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson. : in a post-apocalyptic Australia peopled by village-like Utopias, genetically engineered vampires cause concern for an exile from the big city. Harland, Richard, 2004. The Black Crusade, Mount Waverley, Victoria: Chimaera Publications. : Darkly comic story set in Europe, including a chapter starring ‘love vampires’. Keegan, Mel, 2004. Nocturne, dream-craft. : a gay-themed ebook set in 1892 starring adventurer Vince Bantry. Kelleher, Victor, 1999. Into the Dark, Ringwood, Victoria: Viking. : Kelleher revisits Dracula from the perspective of Renfield. Lovell, Marc, 1974. An Enquiry into the Existence of Vampires aka Vampire in the Shadows, New York: Doubleday. : A newspaper advertisement seeking a vampire mate draws attention in the English moors. Marillier, Juliet, 2006. Wildwood Dancing, Sydney, New South Wales: Pan. : Set in Transylvania, in which a group of sisters are able to access the fairy world. McMullen, Sean, 2004. Glass Dragons, New York: Tor. : second in the Moonworlds series, a fantasy, and like its predecessor, Voyage of the Shadowmoon (Tor, 2002) stars a vampire character. Mudrooroo, 2000. The Promised Land, Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson. : final book in the Master of the Ghost Dreaming series, set on the WA gold fields. Mudrooroo, 1999. Underground, Pymble, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson. : continues the story of The Undying which much of the action taking place in an underground, once-volcanic cavern system as the Aborigines go headto-head with the vampire Amelia. Mudrooroo, 1998. The Undying, Pymble, New South Wales : Angus and Robertson. : a schooner of Aborigines fleeing colonial Tasmania (as described in Master of the Ghost Dreaming, 1991) encounter a vampire who haunts their flight, and infects several of their number.

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Praed, Rosa (Mrs Campbell), 1886. The Brother of the Shadow: A Mystery of Today, London, England: Routledge. : no details available. Praed, Rosa, 1891. The Soul of Countess Adrian, London: Trischler. : an actress in London is possessed by a vampire, but the spirit is driven out by an exorcism. Richards, Kel, 1997. The Vampire Serpent, Lane Cove, New South Wales : Beacon Communications. : a Sherlock Holmes story about a vampire on the streets of London. Ryan, Tracy, 1997. Vamp, South Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press. : a vampire seduces a young woman after they meet in a Perth asylum. Thereinafter things devolve into a most unsatisfactory conclusion. Westerfeld, Scott, 2006. Peeps, Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin. : American writer Westerfeld, treated as an honorary Australian and a winner of the Australian Aurealis award, who divides his time between the US and Sydney, takes a scientific approach to vampirism in his New York-based YA novel in which he draws parallels between vampires and parasites, noting that not all parasites are bad for you…

Films: Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, 1974. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Stars Barry Crocker, Barry Humphreys and Donald Pleasance. : Barry, reprising his role from The Adventures of (1972), must save Dame Edna Everage from European Count von Plasma. Bloodlust, 1992. Directed by Jon Hewitt and Richard Wolstencroft. Stars Jane Stuart Wallace, Kelly Chapman and Robert James O’Neill. Windhover Productions. [Videorecording: VHS] : A low-budget vampire heist flick with cult appeal (banned in the UK) in which vampires encounter gangsters and religious extremists on the streets of Melbourne. Outback Vampires, 1987. Directed by Colin Eggleston. Stars Richard Morgan, Angela Kennedy and Brett Climo. Somserset Films. [Videorecording: VHS]. : A quasi-comic take along the lines of Rocky Horror Picture Show in which three travellers find themselves hosted by vampires in an isolated mansion near a decrepit outback town.

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Queen of the Damned, 2002. Directed by Michael Rymer. Stars Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend. Los Angeles: Warner. [Videorecording: DVD]. : An American movie adapting two Anne Rice books, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. Shot in Victoria (substituting for the US and UK) with numerous Australians in the supporting cast. Thirst, 1979, directed by Roy Hardy. Stars Chantal Contouri and Shirley Cameron. FG Films. [Videorecording: DVD, Umbrella]. : The descendant of Elizabeth Bathory is seduced by a blood-drinking cult using brainwashing techniques, causing hallucinatory footage.

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