The Golden Lake

Reader's Guide

The Golden Lake is significant as an early Australian science fiction adventure novel and as an example of the 'lost race romance' subgenre. In her essay 'Fabulating the Australian Desert: Australia's Lost Race Romances, 1890-1908', Melissa Bellanta includes this novel alongside works by Francis Hogan, Ernest Favenc, John David Hennessey, George Firth Scott, Rosa Praed, Alexander MacDonald, and William Sylvester Walker. Contemporary reviews were scathing: The Brisbane Courier called it 'Rider Haggard, out-haggarded' and a 'sequence of glaring improbabilities', while The Sydney Morning Herald described it as possessing 'an imagination which submits to no control'. Despite the harsh criticism, the novel's inclusion in scholarly discussions of Australian lost race romances indicates its place in the literary history of the period. The work is available at Project Gutenberg Australia and in the Lost Worlds Australia Anthology.

Did You Know?

• The two adventurers in the novel are named Dick Hardwicke and Archibald Martesque.
• The Brisbane Courier reviewer described the novel as 'Rider Haggard, out-haggarded'.
• Melissa Bellanta's essay includes this novel under the category of Australian 'lost race romances'.

Premise & Narrative Framework

The Golden Lake, published in 1890 by Australian author Carlton Dawe, is a science fiction adventure novel whose subtitle—"The Marvellous History of a Journey Through the Great Lone Land of Australia"—signals its grandiose ambitions. At its core, the novel follows two adventurers, Dick Hardwicke and Archibald Martesque, who set out to locate a legendary golden lake concealed somewhere in the vast Australian interior. Their quest is not one of random exploration but is guided by a map left behind by a dying explorer, a bequest that serves as the narrative's inciting device. This framing positions the story as a treasure-hunt adventure set against the backdrop of the Australian outback, blending elements of speculative fiction with the romance of discovery. The phrase "Great Lone Land" in the subtitle evokes a romanticized, almost mythic quality that the novel ascribes to the Australian interior, suggesting a landscape ripe for extraordinary and fantastical encounters far removed from the settled colonies.

Genre & Literary Context

Melissa Bellanta, in her 2004 essay "Fabulating the Australian Desert: Australia's Lost Race Romances, 1890-1908" published in Philament No. 3, situates The Golden Lake within a broader literary movement she terms the Australian "lost race romance." This category encompasses a cluster of works produced between 1890 and 1908 that share a fascination with hidden civilizations, unexplored territories, and the idea that the Australian interior harbored secrets unknown to the wider world. Alongside Dawe's novel, Bellanta includes Francis Hogan's The Lost Explorer (1890), Ernest Favenc's The Secret of the Australian Desert (1896) and Marooned on Australia (1896), John David Hennessey's An Australian Bush Track (1896), George Firth Scott's The Last Lemurian (1898), Rosa Praed's Fugitive Anne (1902), Alexander MacDonald's The Lost Explorers (1906), and William Sylvester Walker's The Silver Queen (1908). This grouping reveals that The Golden Lake was not an isolated curiosity but part of a sustained, roughly two-decade-long wave of Australian speculative fiction that drew on the mythic potential of the desert landscape.

Contemporary Critical Reception

The critical response to The Golden Lake at the time of its 1890 publication was decidedly negative, with both major Australian newspapers delivering pointed criticism. In The Brisbane Courier, a reviewer acknowledged the novel's audacity by comparing it to the work of Rider Haggard, the celebrated master of adventure fiction, but ultimately judged Dawe as having surpassed Haggard only in the negative sense, coining the memorable phrase "Rider Haggard, out-haggarded." The reviewer praised the sheer boldness of the attempt, noting that finding a writer and publisher willing to invest in such a project during an age of growing scepticism was itself noteworthy. However, the criticism was sharp: the novel was faulted for a "sequence of glaring improbabilities" and for distorting "every canon of bush law" in service of what the reviewer called a bush legend. The Sydney Morning Herald was equally unsparing, arguing that while a lack of imagination was a misfortune, it was far worse to possess an imagination "which submits to no control," one that "revels in a phantasmagoria of incredibilities." Both reviews suggest that contemporary readers found the novel's speculative elements excessive and poorly disciplined.

Enduring Presence & Accessibility

Despite the scathing reviews it received in 1890, The Golden Lake has maintained a foothold in the Australian literary landscape through its continued availability to modern readers. The novel is accessible through Project Gutenberg Australia, a digital library dedicated to preserving and distributing Australian literary works, ensuring that the text remains free and readily available to anyone with internet access. Additionally, the opening chapter of the novel has been included in the Lost Worlds Australia Anthology, a curated collection that highlights significant works of Australian speculative and adventure fiction. This inclusion in an anthology signals that, while the book may not have achieved the commercial success its publisher had hoped for—as the Brisbane Courier reviewer wryly noted about the need for "a remunerative quantity of readers"—it has nonetheless been recognized as a noteworthy artifact of Australian science fiction and adventure writing. For contemporary readers interested in the early history of Australian speculative fiction, The Golden Lake offers a direct window into the imaginative possibilities that the vast, largely unexplored interior of the continent held for writers at the close of the nineteenth century.