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From the Edge: Australia's Lost Histories
In March 1797, five British sailors and 12 Bengali seamen struggled ashore after their longboat broke apart in a storm. Their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove were stranded more than 500 kilometres southeast in Bass Strait. To rescue their mates and to save themselves the 19 men must walk 700 kilometres north to Sydney.
That remarkable walk is a story of endurance but also of unexpected Aboriginal help.
From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories recounts four such extraordinary and largely forgotten stories: the walk of shipwreck survivors; the founding of a 'new Singapore' in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; Australia's largest industrial development project nestled amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara; and the ever-changing story of James Cook's time in Cooktown in 1770.
This new telling of the central drama of Australian history ;the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, may hold the key to understanding this land and its people.
That remarkable walk is a story of endurance but also of unexpected Aboriginal help.
From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories recounts four such extraordinary and largely forgotten stories: the walk of shipwreck survivors; the founding of a 'new Singapore' in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; Australia's largest industrial development project nestled amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara; and the ever-changing story of James Cook's time in Cooktown in 1770.
This new telling of the central drama of Australian history ;the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, may hold the key to understanding this land and its people.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
277 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 3, 2016
14 people are currently reading
199 people want to read
About the author
Mark McKenna
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May 22, 2017
In From the Edge, Mark McKenna explores encounters between Aboriginal people, early explorers and colonists, from their initial contact to their present day relationships. He notes that Aboriginal people enter history 'only when Europeans visit their country' and that their existence and their role are nearly always mediated through European eyes. He also examines these selected events from an Aboriginal perspective however, to try to reach a more balanced view of what might actually have happened.
Empire builders the world over thought all they had to do was arrive in a newly discovered country and declare ownership, taking over its people and resources for their own ends, displaying a level of arrogance and cruelty that I find truly appalling. In Australia, they disrupted a pattern of life that had existed for thousands of years. By occupying the most fertile land, they disrupted hunting grounds and traditional patterns of movement. The introduction of sheep eroded the land and depleted Aboriginal supplies of game, roots and seeds. Eventually, as with indigenous North Americans, Aborigines would be herded into reserves to live and of course, until relatively recently, the Australian government operated a system of apartheid that discriminated against Aboriginal people in every way possible.
Several themes run through the book: 1) Aborigines were considered pests by most settlers, an inconvenience less than human who at best could be exploited as a resource and at worst could provide sport as moving targets for shooting practice. 2) Often they were portrayed as aggressive warriors ready to attack 'white' people at every opportunity. The truth was that attacks rarely took place except in defence or retaliation. The help they gave to early settlers was often propagandised to reflect the opposite of the truth. 3) Colonists, in Australia as elsewhere, renamed places without considering that they already had names that had been in use for perhaps thousands of years by the indigenous people living there and that were of great significance to them. 4) Little, if any, importance was attached to the thousands of rock drawings across Australia until relatively recently and yet even the most insignificant material remains from early settler days are displayed and glorified in museums. Oral history has been largely ignored and yet we can learn so much from listening to Aboriginal stories which lend a perspective and a value to past events that would otherwise be lost.
In many ways, this is a difficult book to read because the treatment of the Aborigines was so inhumane. Many are still understandably bitter about the loss of their land and their ill treatment at the hands of the settlers. Others are trying to move on, working to reclaim their history and have it stand beside colonialist history as its equal. Mark McKenna has written a well researched, intelligent book without ever indulging in sermonising or over emotionalising his arguments. Given the subject matter, I think that's quite an achievement. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of his work.
Thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for an ARC.
Empire builders the world over thought all they had to do was arrive in a newly discovered country and declare ownership, taking over its people and resources for their own ends, displaying a level of arrogance and cruelty that I find truly appalling. In Australia, they disrupted a pattern of life that had existed for thousands of years. By occupying the most fertile land, they disrupted hunting grounds and traditional patterns of movement. The introduction of sheep eroded the land and depleted Aboriginal supplies of game, roots and seeds. Eventually, as with indigenous North Americans, Aborigines would be herded into reserves to live and of course, until relatively recently, the Australian government operated a system of apartheid that discriminated against Aboriginal people in every way possible.
Several themes run through the book: 1) Aborigines were considered pests by most settlers, an inconvenience less than human who at best could be exploited as a resource and at worst could provide sport as moving targets for shooting practice. 2) Often they were portrayed as aggressive warriors ready to attack 'white' people at every opportunity. The truth was that attacks rarely took place except in defence or retaliation. The help they gave to early settlers was often propagandised to reflect the opposite of the truth. 3) Colonists, in Australia as elsewhere, renamed places without considering that they already had names that had been in use for perhaps thousands of years by the indigenous people living there and that were of great significance to them. 4) Little, if any, importance was attached to the thousands of rock drawings across Australia until relatively recently and yet even the most insignificant material remains from early settler days are displayed and glorified in museums. Oral history has been largely ignored and yet we can learn so much from listening to Aboriginal stories which lend a perspective and a value to past events that would otherwise be lost.
In many ways, this is a difficult book to read because the treatment of the Aborigines was so inhumane. Many are still understandably bitter about the loss of their land and their ill treatment at the hands of the settlers. Others are trying to move on, working to reclaim their history and have it stand beside colonialist history as its equal. Mark McKenna has written a well researched, intelligent book without ever indulging in sermonising or over emotionalising his arguments. Given the subject matter, I think that's quite an achievement. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of his work.
Thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for an ARC.
October 29, 2016
‘The country that we long perceived as a ‘land without history’ is one of the most deeply storied countries on earth.’
In the late eighteenth century, seventeen men set off to walk some 700 kilometres from Ninety Mile Beach (in Victoria) to Sydney. Leaving their fellow survivors, they had set off in a long boat after the shipwreck of the ‘Sydney Cove’ off Preservation Island in Bass Strait. When their longboat broke apart in a storm, they had no alternative to walk north following the coastline. This story, of their walk, is also an amazing story of the support they received from the Indigenous people they encountered along the way.
There are three other stories in this book: the founding of a ‘new Singapore’ in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; the constantly evolving story of Captain James Cook’s time in Cooktown in 1770; and the story of Australia’s largest industrial development project amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara.
Each of these four stories involves different encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Each requires me, as a non-Indigenous Australian, to think about the history I have learned and the possible interpretations of events. Before reading this book, I knew very little about these four different stories. I’d not heard of the walk from Ninety Mile Beach in 1797, or of the settlement in West Arnhem Land. I’d never really thought about Captain Cook’s time in (and impact on) what we now call Cooktown in 1770. Until recently, I’d not thought of the impact of the development of the Pilbara on those who’d occupied this ancient land long before European arrival.
I’ve enjoyed reading this book. While I’ve learned more of the history around European arrival, I’ve also had to think (uncomfortably at times) about the impact on those who were here long before us: The Indigenous people and their culture.
I understand that ‘From the Edge’ is the first of two books intended to ‘explore Australian history through place.’ I look forward to reading the second of these books when it becomes available.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In the late eighteenth century, seventeen men set off to walk some 700 kilometres from Ninety Mile Beach (in Victoria) to Sydney. Leaving their fellow survivors, they had set off in a long boat after the shipwreck of the ‘Sydney Cove’ off Preservation Island in Bass Strait. When their longboat broke apart in a storm, they had no alternative to walk north following the coastline. This story, of their walk, is also an amazing story of the support they received from the Indigenous people they encountered along the way.
There are three other stories in this book: the founding of a ‘new Singapore’ in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; the constantly evolving story of Captain James Cook’s time in Cooktown in 1770; and the story of Australia’s largest industrial development project amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara.
Each of these four stories involves different encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Each requires me, as a non-Indigenous Australian, to think about the history I have learned and the possible interpretations of events. Before reading this book, I knew very little about these four different stories. I’d not heard of the walk from Ninety Mile Beach in 1797, or of the settlement in West Arnhem Land. I’d never really thought about Captain Cook’s time in (and impact on) what we now call Cooktown in 1770. Until recently, I’d not thought of the impact of the development of the Pilbara on those who’d occupied this ancient land long before European arrival.
I’ve enjoyed reading this book. While I’ve learned more of the history around European arrival, I’ve also had to think (uncomfortably at times) about the impact on those who were here long before us: The Indigenous people and their culture.
I understand that ‘From the Edge’ is the first of two books intended to ‘explore Australian history through place.’ I look forward to reading the second of these books when it becomes available.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Melbourne University Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
June 23, 2018
Finished: 23.06.2018
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: C
#20BooksOfSummer
Conclusion:
Australian colonial history and engagement with the first Australians that I didn't know about.
This was a quick read....but at times difficult to take in. McKenna maintains a balanced and positive tone and hopes his book will enlighten those who want to know more about the beginnings of the nation we call Australia. Personally...the first of the four stories was the best.
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: C
#20BooksOfSummer
Conclusion:
Australian colonial history and engagement with the first Australians that I didn't know about.
This was a quick read....but at times difficult to take in. McKenna maintains a balanced and positive tone and hopes his book will enlighten those who want to know more about the beginnings of the nation we call Australia. Personally...the first of the four stories was the best.
April 17, 2023
In this book, Mark McKenna, a renowned Australian professor and historian, writes about 4 Australian stories of early interactions between settlers and aboriginal people. The author does a great job of telling the stories, including settler notes or aboriginal oral histories. Apart from giving great insight on the history of Pilbara, south-eastern aboriginal communities, Victoria settlement in NT and Cooktown, what I liked about this book is how looks to different perspectives to find hope and an opportunity of true reconciliation between the traditional custodiands of this land, European settlers' descendents and anyone who is part of the present multicultural Australian society.
Favourite paragraph:
"For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. The shared telling of Cooktown's founding moment is one guiding light. The Guugu Yimithirra's decision to reconcile with Cook transcends time and place. Both local and national in resonance, it changes Cooktown from a frontier town to a place of community and national rebirth."
Story 1: Sydney Cove
After the wreck of the merchant ship the Sydney Cove in February 1797, this tiny island in Bass Strait little more than three kilometres long and one kilometre wide became the site of the first European settlement south of Sydney. Few Australians are aware of the story that unfolded from Preservation Island, and even fewer are aware of its true significance. The first overlanders in Australia to pass through extensive stretches of Aboriginal Country have been largely forgotten. These men experienced the most sustained contact with Aboriginal people in the early colonial period beyond Sydney. Between March and May 1797, they traversed 700 kilometres of Australia's south-east coastline, meeting and sometimes camping with Aboriginal people from at least eight distinct language groups between northern Victoria and Sydney.
The story of Clark's walk along the coast is one of strangers who pass through vast areas of the country and leave Aboriginal cultures intact. Nearly all the party's contact with Aboriginal people was peaceful. If not for the generosity of those they met along the way, all seventeen walkers would have perished long before they reached Sydney. There was, in fact, very little conflict. It is overwhelmingly a story of cooperation and hope. Perhaps now, after more than two centuries, we finally have the eyes for what took place on the beaches of New South Wales in 1797.
Story 2:
History of the first settlement in NT called "Vicoria" at Port Essington, which ended up failing due to the hostile weather and disease.
Story 3: Pilbara
Although Aboriginal labour had enabled the establishment of the profitable pearling and pastoral industries and formed the backbone of the Pilbara gold rushes in the 1890s, their pivotal role as founders and pioneers was rarely if ever acknowledged.
In the seven years between 1863 and 1870, a culture that had existed for thousands of years was decimated. For years afterwards, the evidence of mass shootings continued to mount.
In 2013, local Aboriginal groups and others from across Australia came together to inaugurate the first National Day of Commemoration of the Flying Foam Massacre. Aboriginal leaders from the Pilbara stood on the steps of Parliament House in Perth to draw public attention to the day. The fate of the memorial site at King Bay and the story of the Flying Foam Massacre are now undeniably connected to the protection of the Yaburara's extraordinary cultural legacy. So, too, is industry's presence on Murujuga. The home of Australia's largest industrial development, the North West Shelf Gas Project, stands on the very ground where one of Australia's worst frontier massacres took place. On the shores of Murujuga, the protection of ancient cultural heritage, the memory of the violent history of colonialism, and the mighty hands of industry are messily entwined.
Story 4: Cooktown
The moment when peace is established between Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr is not only an allegory of reconciliation. It is also a parable of cultural integrity. At the same time as the story challenges non-Indigenous Australians to see their history from the Indigenous perspective, it also asks the Guugu Yimithirr to forsake some of their most deeply ingrained beliefs about Cook and the arrival of the British in Australia. Cook becomes more than the embodiment of invasion and dispossession; he is also the promise of peace and reconciliation. He plants the seeds and is gone. He claims possession without consent yet he also brings with him the law that will belatedly recognise native title more than two centuries later. He is at once the agent of destruction and the agent of redemption. A man who becomes a story that remains forever open-ended; a story that continually draws us back despite the fact that we know the whole tale will always elude us.
Noel Loos, one of the first historians to grapple seriously with the brutality of the north Queensland frontier, estimated that almost twice as many people were reported killed by Aborigines in the Cooktownâ €“ Palmer district than any other mining field in the far north. While the toll of Aboriginal dead, he concluded, was far greater, he also argued that disease, alcohol, opium, displacement and the continued denial of Aboriginal peopleâ € ™ s humanity under the guise of â € ˜ protectionâ € ™ (from 1897 in Queensland) were even more significant contributing factors than violence in explaining population decline. 49 The thundering racism of the era, in which Aboriginal people were condemned to a future-less existence on the margins of settler society, continued the destruction of their society at the same time as it undoubtedly tended to hide the many examples of accommodation and cooperation that ensured their survival, such as working as stockmen and domestic servants. After the initial period of violent confrontation subsided, the two-sided confrontation presented by the Cooktown papersâ €” an illusion in any case given the large number of Aboriginal policemen involved in the killingâ €” became a far messier terrain. What began as the meeting of separate cultures gradually evolved into a murky entanglement in which the power relationship nonetheless remained starkly unequal, the unjust and inhumane policies of colonial and later state governments seeking to control every aspect of Aboriginal peopleâ € ™ s lives. No matter how much our present-day sensibilities might wish to â € ˜ move onâ € ™ from histories of violence and oppression, it remains a perpetual obligation to remember the way in which the land was conquered. By the late 1890s, the Guugu Yimithirr had been pushed off their traditional lands and suffered significant population loss,
Favourite paragraph:
"For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. The shared telling of Cooktown's founding moment is one guiding light. The Guugu Yimithirra's decision to reconcile with Cook transcends time and place. Both local and national in resonance, it changes Cooktown from a frontier town to a place of community and national rebirth."
Story 1: Sydney Cove
After the wreck of the merchant ship the Sydney Cove in February 1797, this tiny island in Bass Strait little more than three kilometres long and one kilometre wide became the site of the first European settlement south of Sydney. Few Australians are aware of the story that unfolded from Preservation Island, and even fewer are aware of its true significance. The first overlanders in Australia to pass through extensive stretches of Aboriginal Country have been largely forgotten. These men experienced the most sustained contact with Aboriginal people in the early colonial period beyond Sydney. Between March and May 1797, they traversed 700 kilometres of Australia's south-east coastline, meeting and sometimes camping with Aboriginal people from at least eight distinct language groups between northern Victoria and Sydney.
The story of Clark's walk along the coast is one of strangers who pass through vast areas of the country and leave Aboriginal cultures intact. Nearly all the party's contact with Aboriginal people was peaceful. If not for the generosity of those they met along the way, all seventeen walkers would have perished long before they reached Sydney. There was, in fact, very little conflict. It is overwhelmingly a story of cooperation and hope. Perhaps now, after more than two centuries, we finally have the eyes for what took place on the beaches of New South Wales in 1797.
Story 2:
History of the first settlement in NT called "Vicoria" at Port Essington, which ended up failing due to the hostile weather and disease.
Story 3: Pilbara
Although Aboriginal labour had enabled the establishment of the profitable pearling and pastoral industries and formed the backbone of the Pilbara gold rushes in the 1890s, their pivotal role as founders and pioneers was rarely if ever acknowledged.
In the seven years between 1863 and 1870, a culture that had existed for thousands of years was decimated. For years afterwards, the evidence of mass shootings continued to mount.
In 2013, local Aboriginal groups and others from across Australia came together to inaugurate the first National Day of Commemoration of the Flying Foam Massacre. Aboriginal leaders from the Pilbara stood on the steps of Parliament House in Perth to draw public attention to the day. The fate of the memorial site at King Bay and the story of the Flying Foam Massacre are now undeniably connected to the protection of the Yaburara's extraordinary cultural legacy. So, too, is industry's presence on Murujuga. The home of Australia's largest industrial development, the North West Shelf Gas Project, stands on the very ground where one of Australia's worst frontier massacres took place. On the shores of Murujuga, the protection of ancient cultural heritage, the memory of the violent history of colonialism, and the mighty hands of industry are messily entwined.
Story 4: Cooktown
The moment when peace is established between Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr is not only an allegory of reconciliation. It is also a parable of cultural integrity. At the same time as the story challenges non-Indigenous Australians to see their history from the Indigenous perspective, it also asks the Guugu Yimithirr to forsake some of their most deeply ingrained beliefs about Cook and the arrival of the British in Australia. Cook becomes more than the embodiment of invasion and dispossession; he is also the promise of peace and reconciliation. He plants the seeds and is gone. He claims possession without consent yet he also brings with him the law that will belatedly recognise native title more than two centuries later. He is at once the agent of destruction and the agent of redemption. A man who becomes a story that remains forever open-ended; a story that continually draws us back despite the fact that we know the whole tale will always elude us.
Noel Loos, one of the first historians to grapple seriously with the brutality of the north Queensland frontier, estimated that almost twice as many people were reported killed by Aborigines in the Cooktownâ €“ Palmer district than any other mining field in the far north. While the toll of Aboriginal dead, he concluded, was far greater, he also argued that disease, alcohol, opium, displacement and the continued denial of Aboriginal peopleâ € ™ s humanity under the guise of â € ˜ protectionâ € ™ (from 1897 in Queensland) were even more significant contributing factors than violence in explaining population decline. 49 The thundering racism of the era, in which Aboriginal people were condemned to a future-less existence on the margins of settler society, continued the destruction of their society at the same time as it undoubtedly tended to hide the many examples of accommodation and cooperation that ensured their survival, such as working as stockmen and domestic servants. After the initial period of violent confrontation subsided, the two-sided confrontation presented by the Cooktown papersâ €” an illusion in any case given the large number of Aboriginal policemen involved in the killingâ €” became a far messier terrain. What began as the meeting of separate cultures gradually evolved into a murky entanglement in which the power relationship nonetheless remained starkly unequal, the unjust and inhumane policies of colonial and later state governments seeking to control every aspect of Aboriginal peopleâ € ™ s lives. No matter how much our present-day sensibilities might wish to â € ˜ move onâ € ™ from histories of violence and oppression, it remains a perpetual obligation to remember the way in which the land was conquered. By the late 1890s, the Guugu Yimithirr had been pushed off their traditional lands and suffered significant population loss,
July 25, 2022
This is such an interesting and thought-provoking book, with four little-known stories of interactions between First Nations people and the British people who were either passing through or seeking to settle in their lands.
The first story of an incredible trek from the coast of Victoria all the way to Sydney by a group of shipwrecked men is absolutely gripping. They only did this with the help of the many Indigenous people through whose country they were passing, and it is heartbreaking to read how quickly the story was changed by people including the Governor of New South Wales, to emphasise the one bad experience the men had in order to turn this into a story of brave white men surviving the savages.
As Mark McKenna says at the end of the book: For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.
We need more books about our history like this one.
The first story of an incredible trek from the coast of Victoria all the way to Sydney by a group of shipwrecked men is absolutely gripping. They only did this with the help of the many Indigenous people through whose country they were passing, and it is heartbreaking to read how quickly the story was changed by people including the Governor of New South Wales, to emphasise the one bad experience the men had in order to turn this into a story of brave white men surviving the savages.
As Mark McKenna says at the end of the book: For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.
We need more books about our history like this one.
July 22, 2017
Very good.
March 15, 2021
The author has a wonderful way of telling these stories of lost history in a gripping storytelling approach. Each story is different, involving a different area of Australia, in four places.
This is a fascinating read.
The author interweaves elements here and there of some of his own experience of also visiting and walking in those places he writes about, some 150-220 years after the people he is writing about.
He intentionally visited these places, and states that he wanted to have the inside view of the places, not just telling the story from a distance, as Banks (and others) had done in looking through telescopes from a distance at the land from the ship (in Story 1), or as Rio Tinto (in Story 3) is operated largely via distance from a control centre rather than at the physical site.
This places him inside and outside the stories he portrays, even going to Scotland to attempt to find information on some original families that might (hopefully) shed some more light on some journals that have not as yet been located. The author is still holding out in hope that those journals may one day be found.
Story One: 1797
The first story is of survivors of the ship wreck, The Sydney Cove, who embark on a trek 700 kms to Sydney. The author emphasises that without the assistance of Indigenous people they would likely not have survived the trek through unknown (to them), rough country. Through older journals and records from the colony archives, it is also shown that the leader of the party states, himself, that without the aid of the Indigenous people he did not think they would have been able to survive long at all.
I am careful not to give the story away, as reading this first story has many interesting surprises and is told in a way to be captivating. I especially was deeply involved throughout the reading in knowing I was reading perspectives of a history that is rarely told.
These Europeans, on the trek from the south of the country to Sydney Cove, were not explorers in the sense that people such as Matthew Flinders and others were specifically explorers. Yet they made their way through this terrain before any other European known to do so. And they did this with the help of many Aboriginal people.
During his walking, the leader of the group, even through the harshness of the trek, made time to marvel at the beautiful and very different countryside, terrain, and rivers, to his native Britain, and wrote every day in his journal. The author draws both from these journals and other sources.
It is an epic journey! And it is told in such a way by McKenna as to keep me turning the pages and looking forward to coming back to it to find out what was to happen next.
Even before the Sydney Cove is shipwrecked, the story has already been captivating in its telling of the rough seas adventure and the gathering together of the group to sail, before they even reach Van Dieman's Land.
There is also the very interesting note, that the sailor's map of Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) showed that it was still attached to the mainland. And it is these sailors and merchants who first take notice that it appeared that there was a strait that separated it as an island. These notes make one think back to those times in such a way as to really reflect just how much of a dangerous adventure this was. This factor, of course, made a big difference to how and where they sailed in that part of the country.
These are the little known, lost histories of early Australia. They are juxtaposed always in the telling of it, by the acknowledgement of the brutal displacement by the British empire of Aboriginal people and of many ingrained discriminations of the era evident, and the relevance of much of that also to our contemporary era. There is always the discussion throughout, acknowledging, that although this may have been new territory to the Europeans, it was not new territory to Indigenous people, who knew the land and individual Country and landscapes intimately.
The other three stories also capture a different perspective of histories.
Story 2: World's End.
At the top end of Australia, Indigenous people were well accustomed to having other visitors to their lands long ago, including the Makassans, and many Indigenous men also travelled with them and stayed away for years at a time. The relationship between these different people was well established. They had also heard reports of, and seen Dutch ships pass along the coast from the early 17th century.
At the tip of the Cobourg Peninsula in West Arnhem Land between 1838 and 1849, when a small group of "British officials and marines attempted to found a garrison in the far north", and during an initial survey of the area by another earlier in 1824, the Aboriginal people watched the ships and crew's movements with curiosity and quiet. In 1824, they thought of the ship as "another white bird that would appear for a few days, and be gone" (p67).
From the early 18th century Aboriginal people were accustomed to the Makassan fisherman from Sulawesi, fishing and searching for pearls, turtle shells and trepang.
The Makassans traded with Aboriginal locals, and Aboriginal men travelled with them to Indonesia and beyond.
"Languages, ideas, goods, and blood - Dutch, Malay, Timorese, and Papuan - had mingled with Indigenous cultures in the north for generations. This was a littoral world of cross-cultural contact and long established trade networks in which the British would largely remain outside observers - an intricate web of land and sea that was already founded and storied deep in time" (p69-70).
The author discusses the inter-connected relationship that the Indigenous people of the area had with others, highlighting the fact that this was already an established trade area, with a culturally and socially aware, experienced, people. He also describes some of the relations between Aboriginal people and the British.
Some British had established warm relations with the Indigenous people, while others had killed many.
Aboriginal people assisted the British in building and establishing their settlement. They "showed them paths through the forest, leading them to the best springs, procuring them seafood... bringing in honey, dragging away the branches of felled trees, ferrying supplies ashore..." (p74).
The experience of Aboriginal people of the Cobourg Peninsula previously was that "no visitor was likely to be a permanent presence in their land" (p74), and so this is how they also viewed these visitors, while extending their generosity and hospitality towards them. But it was soon apparent that these visitors were intending to stay.
The British "admired the grace and dexterity with which the Aboriginal people moved on land and sea" (p76). "Once beyond the narrow bounds of the settlement, the British were almost entirely dependent on Aboriginal bushcraft" ... (p77). "Their generosity, skill, and knowledge of the country could not be doubted" (p77).
"But none of this could shift the fundamental belief of the British that the Aboriginal people occupied a lower scale of humanity" (p77), some even specifying that the British were the first occupants of a new country.
Some of the British were also drawn to the Aboriginal people and their way of life. This is a common thread in some of the stories of the book. Many British were touched by the sensitivity and friendship of Aboriginal people, and were intrigued by a completely different way of life to which they had lived.
This story describes the attempt to create a new settlement, and the relationships between the British and Aboriginal people. Even though the Aboriginal people helped and supported the colony, and it is clear that the British were helped by Aboriginal locals, the inherent assumptions of the British as superior were not shifting in any significant way.
Story 3: The Pilbara.
The Burrup Peninsula holds one of the "oldest, most concentrated and culturally significant galleries of rock art on earth" (p113). Yet it is also "impossible to escape industry's footprint" (p114).
The author describes so many wonderful, awe-inspiring scenes, regarding the rock petroglyphs that are thousands of years old, and with some probably created thousands of years apart from each other. He states that he knows of nobody who has seen these rock art/petroglyphs who has not been significantly affected by them.
However, this story also tells of much of the intense and harsh history of Aboriginal people, as do the other three stories; displaced from their places, mistreated, some of the stories of massacres. These stories, which are hard to read at times because of the shocking reality of it, are also an extremely important part of the whole story, and are never pushed aside at any time by the author as though insignificant aspects of a brutal side of history.
The author conveys all of these different aspects of the full stories, in ways that bring it together in the good, the bad, the destructive, the displacement, the friendship, the communication, and many other angles that make every story in this book worth reading.
He also highlights the juxtaposition of big mining areas and the ancient rock art, being seen within the same sight/site from where he is standing at one moment.
"It was alarming to think that such ancient and priceless cultural heritage stood within a
hair's breadth of obliteration... In Europe or the United States the equivalent of Burrup's
Rock Art would be a proudly managed World Heritage tourist site. Yet in the Pilbara,
Indigenous heritage struggled for recognition amid the push for industrial development"
(p115-116).
There are times of some quite gut-wrenching reading within some of these stories. Although that may be the case, it makes for some gripping and informative reading of some of Australia's lost history. Although at times 'difficult' to read in that regard, only because of the harsh reality that is being described by the author, it is highly significant for readers to be reading this today, and for these stories to be coming to light more explicitly.
Story 4: Grassy Hill
In 1770, Captain Cook, Joseph Banks (botanist) and crew, landed the Endeavour near shore in the North East, after it having been damaged on the reef. They were there for around 7 weeks, repairing the vessel and documenting the botany of the landscape.
The Indigenous people of the area initially watched them with caution, and kept a distance. The Europeans mistook this for shyness, and noted that they didn't understand why the "natives" did not come forth. But the Indigenous people were strategists in their coming forward gradually to communicate with the newcomers. They did everything with a plan, with a strategy, and were in control of events in their own perspective of what was happening. They also assumed that these "visitors" were just that: Visitors, and that they would be leaving at some point before long.
The local Aboriginal people were used to having visitors from other places to their area, as in the second story we are also told this.
When the Europeans and Aboriginal people did make contact, there were both positive and negative connections made. The Aboriginal locals attempted to make friendship and to communicate with the newcomers.
However, we learn that this place was an important neutral zone in Aboriginal law, as a place where the various local Aboriginal tribes could come together to communicate and share. The law was that as a neutral zone, no blood was to be shed on that land and beach. Importantly, also, there was a strong sharing code between the tribes with the bounty of the ocean.
At some point, leading from certain events, there is bloodshed, subsequent to the event of a law of Aboriginal significance having been broken. This event triggers the harsh reality that a neutral zone has now had blood shed upon it.
During the course of the 7 weeks, the two parties form some level of friendly communications. And later, significantly, there is some reconciliation after a "misunderstanding".
However, the Europeans do not understand much of how the Aboriginal people live, communicate, nor why they burn the grass around the camp after a miscommunication, a misunderstanding, and breaking of the law of Aboriginal culture. Nor do they understand what it means when an old man comes to them with a ritual gesture, which they describe as " collecting moisture from under his armpit"... and drawing it "through his mouth". I note this, because this ritualistic gesture is later discussed and clarified, specifically, from the Indigenous perspective, as are other events, through this incredible story of oral history having been passed down over some generations. In this storying, we hear both the European versions of events, and the Indigenous version of events, side by side. This offering of two perspectives, side by side, now sits in a Cooktown museum, and is an important part of a cultural recognition.
This story is near to the end of the book, and is a perfect way to end the book. It's a story of depth and great importance, both moving and clarifying.
Further to this earlier story of Cook, Banks, and the Indigenous people of the area in 1770, the story moves to the 1870/80s, the development of Cooktown as a new settlement, and the "frontier wars" of the era, gold rush times, and the displacement of Aboriginal people in the area.
These two eras of stories interweave together.
Conclusion:
There is so much I can say about this book and all four of the stories. However, I have attempted to highlight just a few of the focuses of each story, and to demonstrate some aspects of how and why this is a great read, for anyone wanting to delve further into the truer histories of Australia's past, with perspectives also relevant to a more contemporary view of history and for where we may go from here.
Sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes gut wrenching. Always educative.
This is a fascinating read.
The author interweaves elements here and there of some of his own experience of also visiting and walking in those places he writes about, some 150-220 years after the people he is writing about.
He intentionally visited these places, and states that he wanted to have the inside view of the places, not just telling the story from a distance, as Banks (and others) had done in looking through telescopes from a distance at the land from the ship (in Story 1), or as Rio Tinto (in Story 3) is operated largely via distance from a control centre rather than at the physical site.
This places him inside and outside the stories he portrays, even going to Scotland to attempt to find information on some original families that might (hopefully) shed some more light on some journals that have not as yet been located. The author is still holding out in hope that those journals may one day be found.
Story One: 1797
The first story is of survivors of the ship wreck, The Sydney Cove, who embark on a trek 700 kms to Sydney. The author emphasises that without the assistance of Indigenous people they would likely not have survived the trek through unknown (to them), rough country. Through older journals and records from the colony archives, it is also shown that the leader of the party states, himself, that without the aid of the Indigenous people he did not think they would have been able to survive long at all.
I am careful not to give the story away, as reading this first story has many interesting surprises and is told in a way to be captivating. I especially was deeply involved throughout the reading in knowing I was reading perspectives of a history that is rarely told.
These Europeans, on the trek from the south of the country to Sydney Cove, were not explorers in the sense that people such as Matthew Flinders and others were specifically explorers. Yet they made their way through this terrain before any other European known to do so. And they did this with the help of many Aboriginal people.
During his walking, the leader of the group, even through the harshness of the trek, made time to marvel at the beautiful and very different countryside, terrain, and rivers, to his native Britain, and wrote every day in his journal. The author draws both from these journals and other sources.
It is an epic journey! And it is told in such a way by McKenna as to keep me turning the pages and looking forward to coming back to it to find out what was to happen next.
Even before the Sydney Cove is shipwrecked, the story has already been captivating in its telling of the rough seas adventure and the gathering together of the group to sail, before they even reach Van Dieman's Land.
There is also the very interesting note, that the sailor's map of Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) showed that it was still attached to the mainland. And it is these sailors and merchants who first take notice that it appeared that there was a strait that separated it as an island. These notes make one think back to those times in such a way as to really reflect just how much of a dangerous adventure this was. This factor, of course, made a big difference to how and where they sailed in that part of the country.
These are the little known, lost histories of early Australia. They are juxtaposed always in the telling of it, by the acknowledgement of the brutal displacement by the British empire of Aboriginal people and of many ingrained discriminations of the era evident, and the relevance of much of that also to our contemporary era. There is always the discussion throughout, acknowledging, that although this may have been new territory to the Europeans, it was not new territory to Indigenous people, who knew the land and individual Country and landscapes intimately.
The other three stories also capture a different perspective of histories.
Story 2: World's End.
At the top end of Australia, Indigenous people were well accustomed to having other visitors to their lands long ago, including the Makassans, and many Indigenous men also travelled with them and stayed away for years at a time. The relationship between these different people was well established. They had also heard reports of, and seen Dutch ships pass along the coast from the early 17th century.
At the tip of the Cobourg Peninsula in West Arnhem Land between 1838 and 1849, when a small group of "British officials and marines attempted to found a garrison in the far north", and during an initial survey of the area by another earlier in 1824, the Aboriginal people watched the ships and crew's movements with curiosity and quiet. In 1824, they thought of the ship as "another white bird that would appear for a few days, and be gone" (p67).
From the early 18th century Aboriginal people were accustomed to the Makassan fisherman from Sulawesi, fishing and searching for pearls, turtle shells and trepang.
The Makassans traded with Aboriginal locals, and Aboriginal men travelled with them to Indonesia and beyond.
"Languages, ideas, goods, and blood - Dutch, Malay, Timorese, and Papuan - had mingled with Indigenous cultures in the north for generations. This was a littoral world of cross-cultural contact and long established trade networks in which the British would largely remain outside observers - an intricate web of land and sea that was already founded and storied deep in time" (p69-70).
The author discusses the inter-connected relationship that the Indigenous people of the area had with others, highlighting the fact that this was already an established trade area, with a culturally and socially aware, experienced, people. He also describes some of the relations between Aboriginal people and the British.
Some British had established warm relations with the Indigenous people, while others had killed many.
Aboriginal people assisted the British in building and establishing their settlement. They "showed them paths through the forest, leading them to the best springs, procuring them seafood... bringing in honey, dragging away the branches of felled trees, ferrying supplies ashore..." (p74).
The experience of Aboriginal people of the Cobourg Peninsula previously was that "no visitor was likely to be a permanent presence in their land" (p74), and so this is how they also viewed these visitors, while extending their generosity and hospitality towards them. But it was soon apparent that these visitors were intending to stay.
The British "admired the grace and dexterity with which the Aboriginal people moved on land and sea" (p76). "Once beyond the narrow bounds of the settlement, the British were almost entirely dependent on Aboriginal bushcraft" ... (p77). "Their generosity, skill, and knowledge of the country could not be doubted" (p77).
"But none of this could shift the fundamental belief of the British that the Aboriginal people occupied a lower scale of humanity" (p77), some even specifying that the British were the first occupants of a new country.
Some of the British were also drawn to the Aboriginal people and their way of life. This is a common thread in some of the stories of the book. Many British were touched by the sensitivity and friendship of Aboriginal people, and were intrigued by a completely different way of life to which they had lived.
This story describes the attempt to create a new settlement, and the relationships between the British and Aboriginal people. Even though the Aboriginal people helped and supported the colony, and it is clear that the British were helped by Aboriginal locals, the inherent assumptions of the British as superior were not shifting in any significant way.
Story 3: The Pilbara.
The Burrup Peninsula holds one of the "oldest, most concentrated and culturally significant galleries of rock art on earth" (p113). Yet it is also "impossible to escape industry's footprint" (p114).
The author describes so many wonderful, awe-inspiring scenes, regarding the rock petroglyphs that are thousands of years old, and with some probably created thousands of years apart from each other. He states that he knows of nobody who has seen these rock art/petroglyphs who has not been significantly affected by them.
However, this story also tells of much of the intense and harsh history of Aboriginal people, as do the other three stories; displaced from their places, mistreated, some of the stories of massacres. These stories, which are hard to read at times because of the shocking reality of it, are also an extremely important part of the whole story, and are never pushed aside at any time by the author as though insignificant aspects of a brutal side of history.
The author conveys all of these different aspects of the full stories, in ways that bring it together in the good, the bad, the destructive, the displacement, the friendship, the communication, and many other angles that make every story in this book worth reading.
He also highlights the juxtaposition of big mining areas and the ancient rock art, being seen within the same sight/site from where he is standing at one moment.
"It was alarming to think that such ancient and priceless cultural heritage stood within a
hair's breadth of obliteration... In Europe or the United States the equivalent of Burrup's
Rock Art would be a proudly managed World Heritage tourist site. Yet in the Pilbara,
Indigenous heritage struggled for recognition amid the push for industrial development"
(p115-116).
There are times of some quite gut-wrenching reading within some of these stories. Although that may be the case, it makes for some gripping and informative reading of some of Australia's lost history. Although at times 'difficult' to read in that regard, only because of the harsh reality that is being described by the author, it is highly significant for readers to be reading this today, and for these stories to be coming to light more explicitly.
Story 4: Grassy Hill
In 1770, Captain Cook, Joseph Banks (botanist) and crew, landed the Endeavour near shore in the North East, after it having been damaged on the reef. They were there for around 7 weeks, repairing the vessel and documenting the botany of the landscape.
The Indigenous people of the area initially watched them with caution, and kept a distance. The Europeans mistook this for shyness, and noted that they didn't understand why the "natives" did not come forth. But the Indigenous people were strategists in their coming forward gradually to communicate with the newcomers. They did everything with a plan, with a strategy, and were in control of events in their own perspective of what was happening. They also assumed that these "visitors" were just that: Visitors, and that they would be leaving at some point before long.
The local Aboriginal people were used to having visitors from other places to their area, as in the second story we are also told this.
When the Europeans and Aboriginal people did make contact, there were both positive and negative connections made. The Aboriginal locals attempted to make friendship and to communicate with the newcomers.
However, we learn that this place was an important neutral zone in Aboriginal law, as a place where the various local Aboriginal tribes could come together to communicate and share. The law was that as a neutral zone, no blood was to be shed on that land and beach. Importantly, also, there was a strong sharing code between the tribes with the bounty of the ocean.
At some point, leading from certain events, there is bloodshed, subsequent to the event of a law of Aboriginal significance having been broken. This event triggers the harsh reality that a neutral zone has now had blood shed upon it.
During the course of the 7 weeks, the two parties form some level of friendly communications. And later, significantly, there is some reconciliation after a "misunderstanding".
However, the Europeans do not understand much of how the Aboriginal people live, communicate, nor why they burn the grass around the camp after a miscommunication, a misunderstanding, and breaking of the law of Aboriginal culture. Nor do they understand what it means when an old man comes to them with a ritual gesture, which they describe as " collecting moisture from under his armpit"... and drawing it "through his mouth". I note this, because this ritualistic gesture is later discussed and clarified, specifically, from the Indigenous perspective, as are other events, through this incredible story of oral history having been passed down over some generations. In this storying, we hear both the European versions of events, and the Indigenous version of events, side by side. This offering of two perspectives, side by side, now sits in a Cooktown museum, and is an important part of a cultural recognition.
This story is near to the end of the book, and is a perfect way to end the book. It's a story of depth and great importance, both moving and clarifying.
Further to this earlier story of Cook, Banks, and the Indigenous people of the area in 1770, the story moves to the 1870/80s, the development of Cooktown as a new settlement, and the "frontier wars" of the era, gold rush times, and the displacement of Aboriginal people in the area.
These two eras of stories interweave together.
Conclusion:
There is so much I can say about this book and all four of the stories. However, I have attempted to highlight just a few of the focuses of each story, and to demonstrate some aspects of how and why this is a great read, for anyone wanting to delve further into the truer histories of Australia's past, with perspectives also relevant to a more contemporary view of history and for where we may go from here.
Sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes gut wrenching. Always educative.
January 22, 2017
Another book that I would make compulsory reading by all Australians and anyone else wanting to hear about first interactions between aboriginal peoples and westerners. There are four sections, each an independent, yet related saga as seen from both indigenous and recent newcomers. The first is an amazing story about a 700km trek of a subset of survivors of a shipwreck in Bass Straight to Sydney overland. They could not have made it without the support of the many aboriginal groups along the way. The second, a poor attempt by the British to found a colony on the Cobourg Penninsula in west Arnhem Land. The third, an amazing snippets of insights into the ancient culture and art of Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula) - gas development vs ancient relicts. The last tells the story of Cook's interaction with the local clans - from both sides. What has been lost is truly depressing.
May 11, 2018
Rich and deep storytelling about sites of encounter between Aboriginal and white settlers. Some of the stories are well known (Cook on the Reef) others largely forgotten (The attempted creation of a New Singapore in Australia's north). All told with an eye to moments of understanding and reconciliation. Not that he downplays or does not cover the violent dispossession, but there is more to the story McKenna wants to argue, and in that depth, the possibility for genuine reconciliation today may lie. The episodic nature of the stories leaves a slightly uneven quality to it, in topic, tone and significance, but overall a very engaging and fresh tale of Australian history.
October 4, 2021
These four little known but interwoven histories, like most genuine Australian histories, need to be retold often. Each contains glimpses of other stories that could be fleshed out to become significant components of Australia's disturbing cultural memory. In several ways the title, From the Edge is not quite right. Yes, they are far-flung, mainly coastal stories, but their unifying subject is less that they are geographically peripheral and more that they are about how a highly evolved Aboriginal civilization (continues today) was misunderstood, ignored and largely wiped-out by insensible, duplicitous and barbaric invaders (disease is another story). The dismissive rejection of the
Uluru Statement from the Heart
and UK mining company, Rio Tinto's willful destruction of the 46,000 year-old Aboriginal cultural occupation of Juukan Gorge in May 2020 provide recent evidence that little or nothing has changed. The title of the book could have just as easily been Nation Building Failures or British Blood Lust.
While I was engrossed (and sometime distressed) by these stories, I found that McKenna's commentary was occasionally and unexpectedly less insightful and more platitudinous; closer to pandering to some form of self-flagellating national disgrace that needs to be examined more carefully if anything is to change. That nothing much has changed when it comes to the devastatingly destructive power of successively incompetent Government attempts to make amends has been clearly articulated by Noel Pearson (mentioned in the last story). For anyone interested in why the settlers behaved so badly, I would point you to Wiley's When the Sky Fell Down. Wiley examines contemporary reports of Aboriginal contact in early Sydney that resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Aboriginal groups and culture. He traces the idea that what you believe influences what you see. At the time, many believed that the Aborigines were not human and were some lower form of barbarous savage. The Aborigines, in turn, saw how the invaders engaged in flogging and hanging and saw these new arrivals as cruel savages.
These ideas, though not mentioned, are exemplified in the contacts described by McKenna.
A few years ago I walked in bare feet about 200 km (six days) along the south western coast of Victoria. I camped in the dunes and carried little. So I had some small insight into the 700 km walk to Sydney up the east coast. Fascinating as this walk was, there was very little detail perhaps due to Clarke's lost journal. But McKenna does raise some intriguing questions. Whatever happened to the Bengalis? Whatever happened to the escaped convicts who set off on foot back to Sydney from Wilson's Promontory? The great unwritten history of white settlement in Australia revolves around the escapees and the forgotten people who inhabited the inland of Australia long before the 'explorers' opened it up.
Speaking of explorers, the arrival of failed explorer Ludwig Leichardt in the failed Singapore aka Port Essington would almost be funny were it not such a sad place. The Captain John McArthur who dutifully saw though the attempted establishment of Port Essington was not the same John Macarthur whose wife established the wool industry in his absence.
I travelled through the Pilbara in the 1970s a little before the industrialisation of the Burrup Peninsular. What is it about Australian Governments that they venerate 3,000 year old Egyptian pyramids and Greek ruins but can't grasp the value of 40,000-60,000 year old artworks and so allow them to be bulldozed with impunity and sanction the treatment of its living custodians with derision and contempt?
No matter how much our present-day sensibilities might wish to 'move on' from histories of violence and oppression, it remains a perpetual obligation to remember the way in which the land was conquered.
While I was engrossed (and sometime distressed) by these stories, I found that McKenna's commentary was occasionally and unexpectedly less insightful and more platitudinous; closer to pandering to some form of self-flagellating national disgrace that needs to be examined more carefully if anything is to change. That nothing much has changed when it comes to the devastatingly destructive power of successively incompetent Government attempts to make amends has been clearly articulated by Noel Pearson (mentioned in the last story). For anyone interested in why the settlers behaved so badly, I would point you to Wiley's When the Sky Fell Down. Wiley examines contemporary reports of Aboriginal contact in early Sydney that resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Aboriginal groups and culture. He traces the idea that what you believe influences what you see. At the time, many believed that the Aborigines were not human and were some lower form of barbarous savage. The Aborigines, in turn, saw how the invaders engaged in flogging and hanging and saw these new arrivals as cruel savages.
These ideas, though not mentioned, are exemplified in the contacts described by McKenna.
A few years ago I walked in bare feet about 200 km (six days) along the south western coast of Victoria. I camped in the dunes and carried little. So I had some small insight into the 700 km walk to Sydney up the east coast. Fascinating as this walk was, there was very little detail perhaps due to Clarke's lost journal. But McKenna does raise some intriguing questions. Whatever happened to the Bengalis? Whatever happened to the escaped convicts who set off on foot back to Sydney from Wilson's Promontory? The great unwritten history of white settlement in Australia revolves around the escapees and the forgotten people who inhabited the inland of Australia long before the 'explorers' opened it up.
Speaking of explorers, the arrival of failed explorer Ludwig Leichardt in the failed Singapore aka Port Essington would almost be funny were it not such a sad place. The Captain John McArthur who dutifully saw though the attempted establishment of Port Essington was not the same John Macarthur whose wife established the wool industry in his absence.
I travelled through the Pilbara in the 1970s a little before the industrialisation of the Burrup Peninsular. What is it about Australian Governments that they venerate 3,000 year old Egyptian pyramids and Greek ruins but can't grasp the value of 40,000-60,000 year old artworks and so allow them to be bulldozed with impunity and sanction the treatment of its living custodians with derision and contempt?
June 2, 2017
Another great history from Mark McKenna. This one covers four little known histories, all around our coast, all involving relations between white people and Indigenous people, from 1797 to the end of the nineteenth century. The most positive one begins the book, where 18 white men walked from their shipwreck near Tasmania to Sydney, with help from Indigenous people. The other three stories - well it's hard to pick which one is most tragic. Maybe the Pilbara, given the magnificent rock art there, but the people are missing, killed or moved off. Port Essington near Darwin was the most unusual, given the interaction with people from other lands was going on well before the British attempted settlement. The effect of the Palmer river gold rush on Indigenous people around Cooktown was terrible. These stories are explained clearly, with some feeling, but in a documented way. The landscape plays a big part. Interesting and really worth reading.
August 13, 2017
Having read a few books on three of the four stories, and having visited them as well, I found it interesting to read McKenna's version of the history where he had tried to put the Aboriginal perspective forward, s sort of alternate history if you like.
With this I have no problem, these versions, as opposed to the sanitised and glorified British ones, need to be told, and the book delivers on this aspect. If you have never thought how it must felt to have been invaded and be stripped of all your lands, family, history, customs and cultures, then you should read this.
While the book is an entertaining and informative enough read, it tends to get bogged down in what I would describe as the Author's penchant for adding his own socio-political views, almost ad nauseam at times.
With this I have no problem, these versions, as opposed to the sanitised and glorified British ones, need to be told, and the book delivers on this aspect. If you have never thought how it must felt to have been invaded and be stripped of all your lands, family, history, customs and cultures, then you should read this.
While the book is an entertaining and informative enough read, it tends to get bogged down in what I would describe as the Author's penchant for adding his own socio-political views, almost ad nauseam at times.
June 22, 2022
Years ago, I was on holiday down the coast, and I bought a little pamphlet that regional historical societies like to produce. It described the shipwreck on the Southeast Coast of NSW in 1797 & the survivors long trek through Aboriginal Land back to Sydney. It fascinated me because it was so early in white settlement that the only British people on the continent were living at Sydney Cove. From the site of the shipwreck, it was a long 700 kilometres to Sydney. I also remember that some tribes helped, and some were hostile to their progress. So, when I heard that Mark McKenna had written a book on this, I purchased it.
It is a lovingly produced book, published by Miegunyah Press, with good quality paper allowing for full colour landscape photos which illustrate the forgotten locations where Aboriginal society encountered British settlers. In this book of stories from the edge, Mark McKenna is attempting to do something grand. McKenna is using 4 stories and their locations on the perimeter of the continent, on the 4 points of the land, to represent a ring of linkages that if only we could see and acknowledge, would bring reconciliation to the blood-stained land, and assuage our guilt.
There are 4 contact stories. The first one, the sailors’ walk in SE Aust in 1797 is one of those ‘Thanksgiving’ type stories – without the help of the people who live where you have landed, you would have perished. Contact is fleeting. There is not time to develop shared language or understand each other beyond the simple proposition that one group needs the other group to survive. McKenna imbues the story with many details, and I was fascinated with the aftermath as much as the walk itself.
The 2nd story, set in Arnhem land between 1839-1849, covers the themes of how the 18th century British civilization, with its technology and culture is so epically unsuited to the environment of the Top End of Australia. And the First Nation’s people so pompously looked down upon are flourishing within the space that expels the British from this poorly conceived settlement.
The 3rd story is unfortunately more familiar to me. It is set in the Pilbara in Western Australia, where my husband’s adopted Aboriginal brother now lives, having returned to his homeland in adult life. It is a well-travelled contact story of heart-breaking massacre, destruction of rock art, mining, violence, oppression, and cruelty, and as usual for stories of colonization, complete ignorance of the profoundly old and moving Aboriginal rock Art.
By the 4th story, which in time comes first – 1770- but in the book’s narrative comes last, we have some Aboriginal agency in the making of the stories that we know. This is the future. This is the reconciliation. The book is worth reading just for this chapter alone (though I still have a soft spot for the 1797 tale). Cooktown -1770 – 1970 -1980 - present day QLD.
I highly recommend this book. It is beautiful and poetic in its grand construction. It allows us to consider new ways of thinking about contact between the First Nations people of Australia and the settlers. It does this without pulling away from the tragic story of settlement but aims to enrich our history.
It is a lovingly produced book, published by Miegunyah Press, with good quality paper allowing for full colour landscape photos which illustrate the forgotten locations where Aboriginal society encountered British settlers. In this book of stories from the edge, Mark McKenna is attempting to do something grand. McKenna is using 4 stories and their locations on the perimeter of the continent, on the 4 points of the land, to represent a ring of linkages that if only we could see and acknowledge, would bring reconciliation to the blood-stained land, and assuage our guilt.
There are 4 contact stories. The first one, the sailors’ walk in SE Aust in 1797 is one of those ‘Thanksgiving’ type stories – without the help of the people who live where you have landed, you would have perished. Contact is fleeting. There is not time to develop shared language or understand each other beyond the simple proposition that one group needs the other group to survive. McKenna imbues the story with many details, and I was fascinated with the aftermath as much as the walk itself.
The 2nd story, set in Arnhem land between 1839-1849, covers the themes of how the 18th century British civilization, with its technology and culture is so epically unsuited to the environment of the Top End of Australia. And the First Nation’s people so pompously looked down upon are flourishing within the space that expels the British from this poorly conceived settlement.
The 3rd story is unfortunately more familiar to me. It is set in the Pilbara in Western Australia, where my husband’s adopted Aboriginal brother now lives, having returned to his homeland in adult life. It is a well-travelled contact story of heart-breaking massacre, destruction of rock art, mining, violence, oppression, and cruelty, and as usual for stories of colonization, complete ignorance of the profoundly old and moving Aboriginal rock Art.
Yet long after the reserves of gas and iron ore have been exhausted and the industrial plans and ports have turned to dust, the rock art will hopefully remain, its abiding presence transcending all that we have rushed to establish on Murujuga in so little time.
By the 4th story, which in time comes first – 1770- but in the book’s narrative comes last, we have some Aboriginal agency in the making of the stories that we know. This is the future. This is the reconciliation. The book is worth reading just for this chapter alone (though I still have a soft spot for the 1797 tale). Cooktown -1770 – 1970 -1980 - present day QLD.
I highly recommend this book. It is beautiful and poetic in its grand construction. It allows us to consider new ways of thinking about contact between the First Nations people of Australia and the settlers. It does this without pulling away from the tragic story of settlement but aims to enrich our history.
August 9, 2019
Lost indeed, but hopefully less lost after this book. It is a somewhat unusual format of 4 separate stories, but all worth sharing.
For a companion piece to the first story about the almost unbelievable long walk from Victoria to Sydney in 1797, a must read is Jock Serong's Preservation (2018), a fictional account of this historical event based on the known facts which shows how it could have happened.
For a companion piece to the first story about the almost unbelievable long walk from Victoria to Sydney in 1797, a must read is Jock Serong's Preservation (2018), a fictional account of this historical event based on the known facts which shows how it could have happened.
April 30, 2020
This was recommended in my environmental science course. What a fascinating read! Four unique, rich Australian stories I was completely oblivious to (precisely McKenna’s suggestion it seems). So much neglected Indigenous and European history in this country, particularly unacknowledged or unremunerated bloodshed at the hands of colonial forces. Very well researched, naturally slow at times with the wealth of names, dates and locations that one inevitably forgets, but a top read.
September 13, 2020
Fascinating insights on not widely known incidents in Australian history specifically involving interactions of colonizers and indigenous peoples. Did not complete last chapter as foumd the facts of the story overwhemingly sad.
June 28, 2017
A must read book for all Australians ........who have, or could develop a care, for 'big picture' history.
September 1, 2017
Excellent history - at last some unbiased stories of first contacts. Not usually uplifting but good and well researched history
February 2, 2018
An essential book to understand Australian history and the relationship between white explores and aboriginal peoples. Relationships of the past and the implications on today.
May 7, 2020
Really good. Apparently he is doing a follow up with more cases - I'll definitely read that as well. Now I need something on the frontier wars proper.
August 7, 2021
This is a book every Australian should read. It will haunt your memory and ignite your dreams of what Australia could become.
July 31, 2022
Factual inaccuracies. Lazy footnotes, cloud my trust in the author. One (footnote) in particular refers you to a whole diary, not a page number, but the whole diary of >80,000 words, and if you take the time to read the diary reference, the foot noted incident, takes place 2 months later, 3,000 kms away, under a completely different set of circumstances, from where it is said to have occurred.
Appalling standards of academic rigour.
Unsurprisingly, the writing is laden with the author's views and judgements. Fidelity to historical documents ranks well below.
Incidentally, the journal by Sir Joseph Banks, referred to in the footnote mentioned above is a veryinteresting read (ie far more so than McKenna's book.
Appalling standards of academic rigour.
Unsurprisingly, the writing is laden with the author's views and judgements. Fidelity to historical documents ranks well below.
Incidentally, the journal by Sir Joseph Banks, referred to in the footnote mentioned above is a veryinteresting read (ie far more so than McKenna's book.
December 31, 2016
This book has stories of Australian colonial history and engagement with the first Australians that I didn't know about. I think his take on these stories is interesting and worthwhile as he tries to provide a positive way forward for colonisers and the colonised. The most effective story is the first about a journey by shipwreck survivors from ninety mile beach to Sydney cove. the irony or tragedy of the story, like that of white history in Australia is that the aboriginal contribution to the white fellas survival is written as threat, violence and murder rather than knowledge, engagement and welcome.
April 21, 2017
A fantastic introduction to an alternative Australian history, from the Indigenous perspective. Fascinating, and easy to read. I am looking forward to reading more history written by McKenna.
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