Sorry, I think this story will be hard to track down. I came across it in a second hand copy of an anthology of Australian short stories from an Australian publisher (Houghtoin Miffin) published in 1983. It may crop up in more recent anthologies but it seems there isn’t a good current anthology of Australian Short Stories available, which is a pity because Australian literature is particularly rich in this form. There was in fact a boom in Australian short stories around the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, thanks to the support of magazines like Bulletin. Barbara Baynton, Frank Davison and Alan Marshall all used the form to write powerful evocations of life in the Outback. Ethel Anderson is a very interesting figure, an essayist, poet and painter as well as a short story writer. The story I’ve chosen is another that focuses on cruelty and childhood trauma, but with a peculiar, darkly comic slant. The story’s opening sets the tone for what’s to come – “Dr Phantom did not really care for children.”
First published in At Parramatta, F. W. Cheshire, 1956, available in The Oxford Book of Australian Short Stories, ed Michael Wilding, 1994, available second hand or online at the Internet Archive
A Personal Anthology 