Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies - The Passing of Ron Edwards and Col Newsome, More Kelly Legends, and Schoolchildren's Folklore Revisited

Abstract

Once again we have been delighted at the richness of both biographical and evaluative materials being offered to 'Australian Folklore' for possible publication, even as we note the steady increase in the number of private scholars,particularly women, who are now working in the field. These individuals and their several organisations are regularly offering for consideration both articles and reports on significant aspects of the traditional culture of Australia and also on its relations, past and current, with: neighbouring societies, antecedent ones, and those which offer contrasts to things Australian. To anticipate, we wish to record now the likelihood soon of significant material on the South Pacific and also from New Zealand. Readers will also notice that our sister journal, 'Asian Folklore Studies', has changed its focus somewhat and is now called 'Asian Ethnology', with a special focus on the folk culture of Viet Nam in its first issue. Pleasingly one of its former editors is continuing working from the Research Institute in Nagoya, Japan. In the case of Australia itself, there would appear to be a stronger wish to record and evaluate the work of earlier folklorists, as is obvious from the range of pieces now included on some of the key figures of the folk renaissance from the 1950s. In this connection, it is intended that the 2009 issue will contain a number of the papers from the forthcoming seminar on the lives and writings/ contributions of the late Keith Garvey and the more recently deceased Col Newsome, both of whom were anachronistic in many ways, not the least of which was: their style of 'publication', of revisiting in their writings the regional frontier of northern New South Wales', of their recensions of the traditional pastoral history of the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, in particular.