J. Filmore Sherry. Phosphor: An Ischian Mystery. Melbourne: Centennial Publishing Co., 1888.
Phosphor has some claim to being the weirdest Australian tale ever penned.
A despondent young man, buried alive after imbibing snake venom to test an antidote he'd invented, breaks out into a subterranean kingdom, inhabited by prehistoric creatures and anthropoids who are both Latin-speaking and phosphorescent!
The queen of the anthropoids, who has a good figure but the head of an ape, takes a fancy to the hero and plans to use him as breeding stock to boost the gene pool of her tribe.
Rather than submit, the hero kills the queen (with a poisonous snake) and is then speedily returned to Australia after a fortuitous volcanic eruption.
