After Before Time

by Robbi Neal

Stories of life from a remote Aboriginal community that sing with vivid and simple life, truth and power.

At the end of 2008, Robbi Neal and her family travelled to the other end of mainland Australia to a remote Aboriginal community. They planned to stay for twelve months. Seven years later, they are still there.

This moving collection of linked narratives centring around a remote Indigenous community has been inspired by real people and real events - the stories might read like fiction, but they are based on fact. The events they describe really happened. Each story is true to the person who inspired it and Robbi has been given permission to share these truths by writing them down, both by the person who influenced each story and by the Elders concerned.

These stories sing with vivid and simple life, truth and power. These are stories of shame, pain and sorrow, but also joy and love - and they transform our understanding of 'the Indigenous experience'. The narratives tell familiar stories - of dispossession, destitution, children being taken away, hopelessness and powerlessness - but it tells them in a very different, direct, simple and powerfully moving way. Robbi Neal captures in a unique and compelling way the voices and histories of these people - their warmth, humour, wisdom and often their irrepressible joy. AFTER BEFORE TIME is profoundly fresh, powerful and moving.

'Reading After Before Time is a total heart experience. Be prepared to experience a whole gamut of feelings, as there is no soft-pedalling here. The characters disclose the depth of their anger, sadness, grief and pain, directly and bluntly. But there is also great love, warmth, and generosity of spirit towards each other and towards those whites who, over the generations, have loved and tried to help them. The book is rich with insights into customs, traditional beliefs, practices and culture; and humorous observations of what the protagonists regard as absurd white behaviour and demands.' Newtown Review of Books

Genres: Indigenous

320 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2017

About the author

Robbi Neal's first book SUNDAY BEST, a memoir was developed as part of the HarperCollins/Varuna awards program and published by HarperCollins in 2004. AFTER BEFORE TIME, which told stories of indigenous life in a remote community, was published in 2016. THE ART OF PRESERVING LOVE, a story that spanned 25 years from 1905 to 1930 was published in 2018 under the pen name Ada Langton.

Robbi also paints and is currently working towards an exhibition scheduled for 2022 at Redot Fine Art Gallery, Singapore. She is a mama of five wonderful humans (you're welcome world).

She has lived in country Victoria, Australia, for most of her life and lives only a few of blocks from where her novel THE SECRET WORLD OF CONNIE STARR (2022) is set. She loves to walk down Dawson Street past the church her grandfather preached in, the same church with the same columns that appear in in this book.

When Robbi isn't writing, she is painting, or reading or hanging out with her family and friends, all of whom she adores. She loves procrasti-cooking, especially when thinking about the next chapter in her writing. She also loves cheese, any cheese, all cheese and lemon gin or dirty martinis, the blues, and more cheese.

Reviews

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engaging, sometimes funny and sometimes confronting collection of memoirs from six members of the Umpila language community from northern Queensland. Although Robbi Neal’s name is on the cover, the book reads as linked memoirs, all told in first person. The first pages include signed and witnessed permissions from the Aboriginal men and women whose stories are included, giving Neal their blessing to publish their stories. The experience of reading is like listening into the conversations of this community. The voices are strong and the stories – of family, romance, heartbreak, education, mustering, fishing and a whole range of other fragments of life on Cape York – are completely absorbing. I hope that many more of these stories are published, ensuring that community voices and points-of-view make their way into Australian literature. It is also impossible to read this book without realising how differently these speakers see the world compared to many of the urban officials who are charged with making and enforcing legislation and providing services. The racism recounted is horrifying, even more so because it’s not treated as unusual. The removal of the child, Ebony-Lee, from her desperate and grieving great-grandmother is at the heart of the book. I’ve had After Before Time on my desk for a while since reading it, and I keep picking it up to re-read sections. I love the way it captures a sense of the place and the community relationships. I’d love to know more about the process of collecting the stories - for example, in one ‘yarn’ Barney, a teenage boy, tells about the time he punched Robbie Neal’s young daughter in the face. I spent quite a while trying to imagine the dynamics of the telling and recording of this particular yarn. Despite the permissions, authorship does remain a bit ambiguous and this has to impact on the way the book is read; the stories are written 'for' the people who inspired them Neal says in a foreword, and sometimes include intermingling of events. This is, however, a glorious insight into a complex Australian community and a privilege to read.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

After Before Time was on my to-read list for months and months, but when I finally picked it up this morning, I read it in one go. The true(ish) stories that Robbi Neal has based on the lives of people she has come to know closely in a remote aboriginal community are deeply moving. All the hardships that one would expect (dispossession, death, the missions, domestic violence, addiction, poverty, so on) and all the highs and lows of life besides make these truly cracking stories.
Robbi Neal writes sensitively and without judgement. The subjects are said to have enjoyed their stories being recorded. They provide a great insight into life as it was and is.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine collection of linked narratives gleaned from the author's conversations with indigenous friends in northern Queensland and Thursday Island where she lived from 2008 to 2015.

[Jodi Blackman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking stories from Indigenous and Islander elders, as told to Robbi Neal, who had an three white grandparents and one Indigenous one, and who moved with her family to a remote Aboriginal community to live for several years.

The pain and resilience of generations rings throughout the stories and anyone with any shred of empathy in their hearts can not help but be deeply affected by it.

Highly recommend it to all.

[Alan Marr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very important book. It contains stories of contemporary, “ordinary” Aboriginal people. It describes their lives in all its beauty, dignity, pain and suffering. It reminds us that we still have a long way to go before the first peoples are shown the respect they so richly deserve. I found it deeply moving.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book aloud to all three of my boys and we all enjoyed the stories.

Disclaimer: There is quite a bit of harsh language in this book, as well as sexual references, and racist terms. All of this is necessary for the telling of the stories. But unless you are prepared to expose your children to it, or censor on the fly (as I chose to do) it is best to pre-read the book before reading it aloud to younger children or allowing a child to read it independently.

Having said that, the stories shared in this book are vitally important to read and I'm so glad I stumbled upon this book.

[Brooke Alice (brookes.bookstagram) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful piece of history.
Lovely memoirs from a remote Aboriginal community.
If you can get over the language and spelling (as someone who works and has family of Aboriginal heritage it was not difficult for me) as it’s written from spoken black fella tongue, it’s a great read.

[Kylie Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable, but never losing hope, this book brings to life the realities of living in a remote indigenous Australian community.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the writing and the stories.