Mary Theresa Vidal lived in Australia for less than five years, yet she is remembered as an Australian writer. She was one of the first authors to write fiction about Australia, though her work belongs to the English tradition of the moral tale and the domestic novel, exemplified in the early nineteenth century by the writing of Hannah More, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Yonge. Vidal's collection of moral tales, Tales for the Bush, first serialized in 1844 and published in book form the following year, has been claimed to be the first collection of short stories published in Australia, insofar as the moral tale lies within the bounds of fiction. Her novel Bengala; or, Some Time Ago (1860) is one of the earliest published about the Australian experience. Vidal also wrote a novella-length story about life on the outskirts of Sydney called "The Cabramatta Store: A Tale of the Bush...