CLEVELAND resident Stanton Mellick didn't believe the 1980s critics who claimed Queensland was a cultural backwater, lacking a literary tradition, with no writers to call its own.
So the former University of Queensland lecturer in English went on a 30-year mission to trace the steps of those who have written about locations in the Sunshine State.
In the process, he discovered 530 writers, poets and dramatists who were inspired to put pen to paper about Queensland, from the time it separated from New South Wales in 1859 until the present.
His research, which took him to nearly every local library and council in the State, gave him enough fodder for his latest book, Writers' Footprints, a Queensland Literary Companion, due for release on Friday, to coincide with The Brisbane Writers' Festival.
The book takes the reader on a stroll through specific locations that have fired writers' imaginations and includes entries on Cleveland, Victoria Point, Wellington Point, Birkdale and, of course, Stradbroke and Coochiemudlo islands.
"As Australians, we all know about the poet and author Henry Lawson but does anyone know about Sarah Campion, who wrote five books set in the Burdekin?" Stanton said. "Or Ross Clark's 1993 Poetry Trails compiled for the then Redland Shire Council."
"Footprints goes about trying to give these writers some recognition and creates a place for them in Queensland's written and literary history."
Although Stanton started collecting snippets for the book in the 1980s, it wasn't until the 2007 death of his first wife, Letty Katts, a balladeer best known for her song A Town Like Alice, that the compendium began to take shape.
Released by Australian Scholarly Publications, it is an alphabetical listing of cities, towns and places in Queensland written in styles ranging from poetry, plays, novels and even songs.
Its title was taken from Irish poet Eva Mary Kelly, who moved to Queensland in 1865 with her doctor husband, Irishman Kevin O'Doherty, a former convict, who later became a Member of Parliament.
Many of her poems had a tone of sadness and longing for Ireland and were often penned from her Cleveland cottage, now heritage listed but still standing next to Redlands RSL in Middle Street.
"No footprints hath old time imprest/on Thee of song or story," she lamented in her collection Poems published in San Francisco in 1877.
"It was that line from the poem that made me realise my research was tracing the footprints of those who have written about Queensland," said Stanton, who stumbled over the verse while gathering material for The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, published in 1989.
"My research for The Literary Guide made me suspect there was a writing tradition in Queensland greater than what we were led to believe by critics," said Stanton, whose love of the State's heritage earned him a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2005.
"It was difficult to define who was a Queensland author as most were from overseas or another state, so I decided to change the focus of the book and concentrate on writers who had written about Queensland places, as opposed to Queensland writers."
But Eva Mary Kelly is just one of those mentioned in this 260-page compendium, sprinkled with works chronicling the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Queensland and the Redlands over the past century and a half.
Cleveland was the inspiration for Moyra Oulton's A Lighthouse Etched on Sunset, and Emily Coungeau's quaint 1914 offering Cleveland, about cattle, fragrant breezes and the local hills.
Paul Grano's poem Roots Thrust Deep, admires the bayside suburb's flat farms, French beans, beetroot and sea.
Even Birkdale gets a mention. Stanton could not go past Strawberries and Cream, a poem in the 1962 collection Poems and Pictures of Queensland by Maymie Ada Hamlyn-Harris.
It's a depiction of a "rural paradise with bushland paths" and "wayside apiaries and market gardens" and is a poignant reminder of how the area has succumbed to development, Stanton said.
Ross Clark's musings on Redland Bay are included, along with Barbara Dunin-Horkawicz's poem Low Tide on Morwong Beach, which gives the reader a colourful picture of Coochiemudlo's pristine sand and water.
And if the reader is still unsure of what makes Coochiemudlo so unique, Joy Fritz's 2002 poem The Magic of Coochie captures the island's essence with her descriptions of casuarinas, the smell of seaweed and noise of the barge.
More celebrated authors and poets such as Stradbroke Island's famous daughter Oodgeroo Noonuccal, known as Kath Walker, get attention too.
"This book documents part of our culture and although I researched and wrote it, many Queenslanders helped me to put it together," said Stanton, whose other well-known work is The Passing Guest: A Life of Henry Kingsley, published by University of Queensland Press in 1983.
Although Footprints will have an initial release at next week's Writers' Festival, the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See, Tim Fischer, will officially launch it in Rome in January in an effort to play up the cultural links between Italy and Australia using the book's references to North Queensland's Italian settlers in the canefields.
Book Launch
WHAT: Writers’Footprints, a Queensland
Literary Companion, by Dr Stanton Mellick,
260p, Australian Scholarly Publications,
Melbourne, $49.95 rrp
WHERE: State Library, Queensland Terrace,
Level 1, Stanley Place, South Brisbane.
WHEN: September 3, 7pm-8.30pm
COST: Free
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