The first points in the Objectives of the Australian Fairy Tale Society are:

• Collecting original Australian fairy tales, fairy tale adaptations, interpretations, and criticism;
• Organising and cataloguing this fairy tale collection meaningfully for maximum accessibility by Australian and international researchers, educators, and creatives.

But as soon as we began to collect and organise these stories, we came upon two important issues:

• As fairy tales have been expressed in so many forms, we cannot have a physical archive, and so will use this database as a starting point for further research – because the truth lies in specifics;
• And, when we got to the specific stories, we found that many that had been labelled fairy tales are, in fact, fairy stories – which have quite a different purpose.

There can never be a solid definition of fairy tales because it is a genre where the boundaries are built, not of stone, but of seaweed. Rather than saying absolutely what a fairy tale is, it is more useful to look at a range of characteristics and work out how many of those characteristics are present in any particular story. That is, rather than saying, ‘Is this or is this not a fairy tale?‘, we ask, ‘To what extent, and in what ways is this a fairy tale?’

A major task of this database was to separate these story types.

Our operational definition of fairy tales are stories which contain:

1. Magic, especially magical transformations
2. Dysfunctional or deficient families
3. Coming of Age: the Main Character attains maturity by achieving identity, authority, and home
4. Confrontation with evil
5. HEA (Happily Ever After) = gaining power and/or a home.

Fairy stories are identified by the inclusion of:

1. Young children as the Main Characters and targeted audience
2. Moral taught is to submit to someone else’s authority
3. Magic is startling to Main Characters
4. Often very overt allegorical symbolism, e.g. a sorcerer called Knowledge.

This record of the history of fairy tales by Australians can never be complete because research and creation is ongoing, however it should provide future researchers with a map of what we have done in expressing our identity through this transcultural form.

You’re welcome to view the database in progress. Additions can be emailed to Jo Henwood at austfairytales@gmail.com

Updated: 2025