Longgrassing in Paradise

by Monte Dwyer

Darwin longgrassers have been living large since the beginning. They come from all over the Territory to camp in the public spaces around town, to catch up with family and friends, attend health and legal matters, holiday and shop, and drink. Especially drink. And the whitefellas don’t like it. They think they’re noisy and dirty and rude. So, they try to move them on.

For 150 years they’ve been trying to move them on. But the longgrassers won’t go. Yet beneath this running battle between the settled and the free lurks a truth about colonisation that is almost Newtonian in style. This is a story of resilience and denial against outrageous odds, an underdog’s triumph of survival in the modern world, for a people who just refuse to give in

Contains Culturally Sensitive Material.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 22, 2024

Reviews

[Lucy Dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This asks an open ended question, and doesn't give you the answer. In a good way - none of us know (yet) what to do about an issue that has plagued the nation for some time.

This was a book I (and I feel a lot of people in the big smoke, far removed from this lifestyle) needed to read. Chapters comprising of everyday lives and occasionally baffling interactions are woven beautifully between educational chapters to explain where as a nation we are, and how we got to this point today.

Am I biased? Absolutely, my Dad wrote this. But to be honest, I recommend this without the "my Dad wrote this" tagline. And then I just hope people don't pick up on the last name.

[Greg Joffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book on a complex problem. Dwyer weaves in a mix of history, political policy analysis and direct interviews and observations together to provide his view on long grassing (rough sleeping) in Darwin