This book traces the figure of the lost child in Australia's history and imagination.The figure of the lost child has haunted the Australian imagination. Peter Pierce's original and sometimes shocking study The Country of Lost Children traces this ambivalent and disturbing history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from poetry, fiction and newspaper reports to paintings and films, The Country of Lost Children analyses the cultural and moral implications of the lost child in our history and illuminates a crucial aspect of our present condition. At its core are confronting, often troubling, questions about childhood itself.The figure of the lost child has haunted the Australian imagination. Peter Pierce's original and sometimes shocking study The Country of Lost Children traces this ambivalent and disturbing history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from poetry, fiction and newspaper reports to paintings and films, The Country of Lost Children analyses the cultural and moral implications of the lost child in our history and illuminates a crucial aspect of our present condition. At its core are confronting, often troubling, questions about childhood itself.The figure of the lost child has haunted the Australian imagination. Peter Pierce's original and sometimes shocking study The Country of Lost Children traces this ambivalent and disturbing history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from poetry, fiction and newspaper reports to paintings and films, The Country of Lost Children analyzes the cultural and moral implications of the lost child in Australian history and illuminates a crucial aspect of our present condition. At its core are confronting, often troubling, questions about childhood itself.Part I. In the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Lost Child: 1. The lost child introduced: Henry Kingsley's The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn; 2. 'Come let us sing of this fair child heroic': Jane Duff and her brothers; 3. Alfred Boulter A Monument at Daylesford; 4.ló7