How beastly! What's a gorilla doing in an Aussie fairytale? Reading Australian Fairytales, written in 1897 by Atha Westbury, I find 'Twilight '( definately not about vampires) is a 'Beauty and the Beast' ripoff set in Melbourne. A gorilla seemed an odd choice for an antipodean 'Beast' until i discover that a gorilla arrived in the colony of Victoria in 1865. This one though was truly immobilised in an action pose guaranteed to terrify the fainthearted and small children (including me a hundred years later). The display at National Museum at The University of Melbourne obviously fired the imagination of Melburnians and Westbury. Read more: Gorillas at the Museum
Imagining Australia in fairy tales: My PhD journey and beyond