From the 1830s, Australian were kept amused by an extraordinary industry of itinerant entertainers. Before the emergence of electronic media in the twentieth century, the show that travelled was the practical solution to providing a small, widely distributed population with popular entertainment. The travelling show industry embraced an extraordinary diversity of popular culture including opera, vaudeville, minstrels, moving marionettes, menageries and merry-go-rounds. And Circus!
The circus was universal in its appeal, for it combined many of the elements that other travelling entertainments had to offer, together with displays of fine horses and horsemanship.
In 'Circus: The Australian Story', author Mark St Leon summarises the fruits of his inquiries over many years into the history of circus in Australia. His interest was initially sparked by his own insatiable curiosity about his own family's celebrated, yet forgotten, past in circus in Australia.
Within these pages you will read how a colonial circus industry developed out of its Old World roots; how the saga of circus is woven into the historic fabric of modern Australia; how circus in Australia absorbed influences from as far afield as America, Japan and Europe; how Australia has been visited by some of the world's major circus companies; and how Australia's circus people have coped with unrelenting social, cultural, technological and economic change.
You will also read how Australia has been a significant developer and exporter of circus talent. The 'world's greatest bareback rider' May Wirthand the Indigenous wirewalker Con Colleano, although forgotten in Australia, are regarded internationally as among the finest circus artists of modern Times.
The author shows how circus in Australia today, in both its traditional and contemporry genres, is the outcome of a contiuum that extends not only over some 175 years of modern Australia's history., but also back to its London, medieval and ancient roots.
Contents:
Preface
1. Genesis
2. The Astleys of the Antipodes
3. Gold, gravel and grit
4. Dust and spangles
5. Foreign exchange
6. Wirth's Circus
7. Road shows
8. Ox circus
Milestones
Bibliography
Picture credits
Index
Acknowledgements
