The Never Never Land by Mitchell Akhurst


The Never Never Land
Title : The Never Never Land
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
ISBN-10 : 9780977519255
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 306
Publication : First published October 4, 2015

Australia has it own mythologies. Some of them were here long before Europeans arrived; some of them are yet to come. Steam-powered bushrangers. Restless penal colonies. Robotic mining operations. Fairy colonies in the gum trees and old ghosts in the laneways. Drought and fire and flood and new life struggling to emerge from the dust. These are the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we want to hide from.

Thirty new stories from some of Australia’s best-known speculative fiction writers and some of its newest.


The Never Never Land Reviews


  • Thoraiya

    DISCLAIMER: I have a story in this anthology.

    Well, I intended to review this story-by-story but I ran out of time so, apologies and please forgive this bit of drive-by review-like babbling.

    IN SHORT: This is a great anthology regrettably thin on Aboriginal-authored pieces (could be wrong?) but which otherwise admirably fulfils its remit

    MY FAVOURITES: To Look Upon A Dream Tiger by Shauna O’Meara – those who know me know I never could resist a thylacine story. Add to that the constant intense desire to cast off the shackles of modern life and photograph quolls in the mossy environs of Cradle Mountain and I was pretty much sold from the start on this atmospheric tale of the supernatural. Equal first was Rust Titan by Chris Large, for its robust science fictional goodness, seriously cool robots and guai-wus.

    SPOT-ON AUSSIE HUMOUR: The Nexus Tree by Kimberly Gaal (“Bert felt a primal joy joy at the manliness of it all…hardly even screamed when the spider fell on him, and it was a bloody big one too”) was absolutely hilarious from start to finish, Aussie-branded humour matched only by David Coleman’s Spectacularly Lucky Country and the Harvey/Petrie duo’s Trike Race – trike as in triceratops (“They pretty much combined the metabolism of a rock with the resistance to instruction of, well, a brick wall”)

    MORE SERIOUS: Some powerful descriptions in the horrible future envisioned in Donna Hanson’s She’ll Be Right. Adventure Socks by Leife Shallcross was quietly wonderful and Laura Goodins’ Jimmy Boys was packed with creepy goodness. Consumed by Elizabeth Jakimov was a shortie but a goodie with a strong voice. I also really liked the Laneway by Richard L. Lagarto (“Oh Rita saw this, Rita saw that, maybe because I am separated, counsellor this, counsellor that”)

    Again, sorry to those I haven’t specifically mentioned, your steampunk Yass, dirt, eucalypts, Moon fuel, death by crusher, ornithopter mechanics and Launceston-bound zeppelins were most enjoyable!

  • Stephanie

    The aims of the anthology are to presents “stories with Australian settings or characters or themes or flavours, or that draw on Australian histories, experiences and traditions, immigrant or Indigenous” (quote taken from the introduction by the editors).

    The anthology includes thirty stories, which include a wide variety of genres and subjects, and which range from being set in colonial Australia to potential future Australias. As a result of this wide variety, readers will no doubt find that some stories speak more to them more than others. All of them, however, succeed in the editors’ aims of being “Australian” stories, and all are well-written and engaging in their own right.

    Several stories stood out for me in particular:

    Kimberley Gaal’s The Nexus Tree is probably my favourite story in the anthology. Plot-wise, it’s a deceptively simply story of a man, wanting to protect his new trailer from leaves falling from a tree, who seeks to kill and remove the tree, and finds that the tree was more than he thought. The Australian voice is this is superb, and Gaal in particular nails a very larrikin-Aussie voice for Bert, while also writing a fascinating piece of imagined folklore. This is the first story I’ve read of Gaal’s, and I’ll be seeking out more from her.

    Helen Stubbs’ Hard is an almost fairytale-esque piece of fantasy, and is utterly enchanting. Something about this story reminds me of the kinds of fairytale-inspired work written by Catherynne M. Valente. I absolutely adored this story.

    Shauna O’Meara’s To Look Upon a Dream Tiger centres around a photographer’s search for the extinct thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). This is a haunting, almost dreamlike story, and is utterly beautiful and heartbreaking, all at once.

    Suzanne J. Willis’ Memory Lane explores the laneways of Melbourne, and the young girls who begin to vanish from them. This is another story which feels dreamlike, and is utterly haunting. Some of the imagery from this one is going to stick with me for a long time, I think. I believe this is the first story from Willis that I’ve read, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for more.

    Darren Goossens’s Ghost Versions is an another haunting story (and you can probably start seeing some of my own biases and tastes coming out in the stories which stood out to me by now!), of a man left alone when his wife and son choose to leave him. Skilfully written and heartbreaking.

    Rivka Rafael’s Beyond the Factory Wall takes place in steampunk-influenced colonial Australia. This is a powerful story about women and the walls which hold them.

    Several more stories deserve mentions for the spot-on Australian voice they capture, notably Charlotte Nash’s The Seven-forty from Paraburdoo, Donna Maree Hanson’s She’ll Be Right, Dave Coleman’s The Spectacularly Lucky Country (which earned a giggle from me at Tina Swineheart), Michael Kraaz’s The Inventor of Ironclad Creek and Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie’s Trike Race (which is almost worth reading just for the racing names alone).

    Many stories also drew well on both the Australian connection to the land, as well as the potential horrors of the wide-open spaces of Australia, and the things that could lurk below the ground, notably Laura E Goodin’s Jimmy’s Boys, and Jacob Edwards’s Rainbows of the Drought.

    The cover art by Shauna O’Meara also deserves a nod. It’s striking and holds just a hint of the creepy possibilities that could be hiding beneath the landscape, which sums up many of the stories in the anthology well.

    My one real criticism is the lack of Indigenous voices in the collection. It’s difficult to tell if any of the authors I’m not familiar with are Indigenous, and it’s possible that some of them are, but it feels like something which could have been emphasised in the creation of such an anthology. It is pleasing that there aren’t noticeably any non-Indigenous authors appropriating Indigenous stories outright. It would be a nice thing to see a companion to this kind of anthology which focuses entirely on Indigenous writers (and if such a thing exists, and I simply haven’t seen it, please feel very free to point me in its direction).

    Overall, this is a complex and varied anthology which, I feel, very much accomplishes what the editors set out to achieve. There are some excellent stories by well-known Australian authors, as well as some just as good offerings from emerging writers, and many writers new to me who I will now be looking for more work from.

  • Rivqa

    I have a story in this collection, so I'm biased! But there are many other Australian tales to be found within.

  • Jacq

    Some real talent hidden amongst the writers included in this Never Never Land anthology - definitely will be seeking out more of their works!

  • Katherine George

    I actually won this off of a Goodreads giveaway competition. It has taken me a while to read as it is multiple stories written by many authors. I really liked this book, I thought it would be more a long the lines of fairytales but it is actually centered around aliens & the supernatural. It is all Australian, which I absolutely adored!

  • Dion Perry

    The Never Never Land is a collection of short stories which was published as part of their bi-annual anthology by the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. This edition (The Never Never Land) is a collection of stories by Australian writers with an Australiana theme. I did not find all of the stories to be my thing, but being such a diverse collection, I was pleased to see that there was a story there for everyone. The stories range from the dusty outback through the mountains of Tasmania to the streets of Melbourne. There is everything from ghost stories to comedic dinosaur racing. I thought some of the stories lacked the essential Australiana component which I found a little disappointing. Overall I thought it was a very good anthology. My favourite story was in fact the dinosaur race – Trike Race by Edwina Harvey and Simon Petrie. I look forward to the next anthology A Hand of Knaves, which should be published sometime in 2018.

  • Liz

    A mixed bag of very Australian stories — a bit of something for everyone.