Dark Tales from the Long River: A Bloody History of Australia's North-West Frontier

by David Price

From searches for serial killers and missing persons to the persecution of migrants and Aboriginal people, David Price takes us back to a time when the line between lawmakers and criminals was lightly drawn. Based on a wide array of contemporaneous accounts of life in the Gascoyne, these sometimes shocking, sometimes disturbing true crime stories depict an era when Australia’s laws served to maintain order rather than to secure justice. Dark Tales from the Long River offers a window into an evolving history of Western Australia that is still struggling into the light.

232 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2020

About the author

David Price is a Western Australian educator who grew up in the small town of Carnarvon in the 1960s. He has been a teacher, principal and Director of Schools in many parts of the state. Although he now lives in Perth, David has long been intrigued by the hidden history of his hometown and its wilful amnesia about the treatment of Aboriginal people and Asian migrants by the first settlers.

Reviews

[Jenni]

9 true stories of shocking, compelling, disturbing murder, dispossession, violence and misadventure in the Gascoyne region during the 33 year tenure ending in 1915.
A collection of comtemperaneous newspaper artcles exposes the dark side of our colonial history and the policing and social justice system used. The need to maintain order rather than justice and the persecution of Aboriginal people, migrants from Asia, serial murderers as well as petty criminals and what drove them to take the role into their own hands.