People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia

by Grace Karskens

Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, is where the two early Australias - ancient and modern - first collided. People of the River journeys into the lost worlds of the Aboriginal people and the settlers of Dyarubbin, both complex worlds with ancient roots.

The settlers who took land on the river from the mid-1790s were there because of an extraordinary experiment devised half a world away. Modern Australia was not founded as a gaol, as we usually suppose, but as a colony. Britain's felons, transported to the other side of the world, were meant to become settlers in the new colony. They made history on the river: it was the first successful white farming frontier, a community that nurtured the earliest expressions of patriotism, and it became the last bastion of eighteenth-century ways of life.

The Aboriginal people had occupied Dyarubbin for at least 50,000 years. Their history, culture and spirituality were inseparable from this river Country. Colonisation kicked off a slow and cumulative process of violence, theft of Aboriginal children and ongoing annexation of the river lands. Yet despite that sorry history, Dyarubbin's Aboriginal people managed to remain on their Country, and they still live on the river today.

The Hawkesbury-Nepean was the seedbed for settler expansion and invasion of Aboriginal lands to the north, south and west. It was the crucible of the colony, and the nation that followed.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Australia, Indigenous, Environment, Historical

688 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2020

About the author

Grace Karskens is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. Her book The Colony: A History of Early Sydney won the 2010 Prime Minister’s Award for Non-fiction and the US Urban History Association’s 2010 prize for Best Book.

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karskens writes proper, thick history books you can sink into. She is such a great synthesizer - there is so much she has read and absorbed to go into this, it feels as if you get to look at the period through all the various angles, understand the various viewpoints. There are few historians who writing is so engrossing or so widespread.
The surrounds of Dyarubbin - more commonly known as the Hawkesbury region - brings challenges to popular history. I'd say that the shadow of The Secret River - and the TV series it spawned - hangs over the work, but Karskens wisely surfaces the tension explicitly, and without pulling many punches - "For a historian, watching this series is like watching nineteenth-century frontier violence on fast-forward, and out of order.". Grenville's historical fiction is the way many Australians first grappled with the violence of frontier history. However, it is fiction, not history. Karskens grapples with the difficulties this poses, knowing many readers will come in thinking they know this story, but having encountered a version more metaphorical than literal. Massacres were certainly part of the Hawkesbury story, but so was Aboriginal resistance and cross-cultural exchange. Karskens is at her strongest when she engages with the complex dynamics that underpin this, drawing solidly on Paul Irish and the La Perouse community's work, among others.
Karsken's is also fascinating as she digs in to the contested concepts of farming, arguing that the small-farmhold-dependent -on-common-land was used in Australia as a way to get farming moving, just as it was forcibly abolished in England. This brings to life a complex society of convicts and rebels, without ever being so crude as I just was.
While Karskens is clearly aiming for an integration of the histories of the Darug and British arrivals, this doesn't smoothly work. While chapters focused on the interaction of these communities are compelling, the rest of the book has to switch a little awkwardly between these communities. I don't think this is avoidable by Karskens: while we might wish ourselves to be a reconciled post-colonial society, we are not. Traditional history draws on records which trivialized Aboriginal people and left much deliberately unrecorded. While there is much knowledge within Aboriginal communities - and Karskens has built upon oral histories and storytelling projects - we have not yet built the trust we would need to tell those stories in this way. Knowledge is a thing to be earned, through demonstrated understanding and appropriate action. The ambition of the book is a statement of hope and intent, it's awkwardness of execution a reminder that we are not there yet.

[Michael Lever · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is masterly and will no doubt receive well deserved praise. It is likely that no author since Eric Rolls or perhaps Tim Flannery has painted Australian history with such a broad brush, yet with such fine attention to detail. I will leave the inevitable adulation to others and will offer something different here.

The work embodies approaches to the past that require challenge. It is essentially a booster history written by and for the worldview of the inheritors of the white protagonists who largely populate its pages. There are abundant histories of the old world and the Americas written by individuals from vastly different backgrounds to the cultures they comment on. But this work, yet another history of white Australia by a white Australian, for all its qualities cannot provide the sort of decentering, denaturalisation and anthropological voice that could emerge from a more culturally diverse perspective.

To open with a minor grumble around nomenclature - Karskens has unfortunately adopted Paul Irish's equally unfortunate use of the term "beats" to describe the movement of Aboriginal people in the Sydney coastal region over time. With reference to Sydney in particular, the term "beats" already has a well accepted usage - namely, places frequented by gay men for casual sex. One would have hoped that scholars in the social sciences would be aware of such vernacular, but regardless, W Stanner had already over 60 years ago provided a perfectly adequate nested set of terms to describe Aboriginal movement patterns. Stanner appears in Karsken's bibliography, unfortunately his terminology does not.

Of wider concern, is that one would imagine that any work dealing with the Aboriginal past would acknowledge the largely oral nature of Aboriginal knowledge transmission. Karskens is adamant throughout that descendants and inheritors of the Aboriginal owners of the Hawkesbury Nepean still reside in their traditional country. Putting these two factors together,one would expect the work to include a significant level of Aboriginal oral history derived from local Aboriginal people. Yet the opposite is the case. Oral history, the very last section in the books' bibliography, constitutes a total 6 items compared to the more than 1,000 sources the work cites. I find this truly puzzling when one considers that much of the books data on Aboriginal people relies on transcriptions of 19th century conversations with them. Are Aboriginal voices only permissible evidence when substantiated in the journals of dead white men?

Selectivity around sources also seems evident elsewhere. Sylvia Hallam's groundbreaking work is cited in support of Aboriginal women's centrality to food gathering and their engagement in agricultural-style activities. Yet Hallam's work was undertaken nearly half a century ago and concerns south west Western Australia - about as far on the continent as one could go from the Hawkesbury. The work of Bruce Pascoe, far more recent and treating areas far closer to the Hawkesbury is totally uncited, as is the work of Rupert Gerritsen, by far the most comprehensive study on the topic.

Far more disturbing, and I believe with genuine potential for damage is the authors favourable, even idealistic and romanticised depiction of thoroughly toxic behaviour in the past that has caused and continues to cause untold suffering and social disrupture. There is of course a large body of literature on the theory of history that concerns itself with whether historians can or should judge the past, and the manner in which history positions pasts relative to presents. Nevertheless, there must be a point at which a line can be drawn, and behaviour in the past pointed out as negative and damaging.

The chapter ‘The People’s Pleasures’ fails thoroughly to make any such delineation. Rather, from an internal WASP perspective from which such behaviour is unexamined and acceptable, Karskens paints in warm terms the excessive consumption of alcohol, often in week long drunken binges, and frequently associated with blood sports including dog and cock fighting.

We know that domestic violence is now reported at higher rates than at any time in history. This has come about through decades of struggle largely by feminist and women’s rights activists, against the patriarchal powers entrenched in judicial and social systems. We also know now that over 75% of these domestic violence cases, almost exclusively perpetrated by men, are tightly associated with excessive consumption of alcohol. We also know now that the incidence of these drunken attacks invariably increases at times when team, particularly violent team sports are in play. And lastly, we know that Australia has a problem with binge drinking. We have the developed world's highest rate of post-alcohol consumption hospitalisation.

To depict, as Karskens does, these week long drunken binges as some warm hobbit-like celebration of song and fellowship, is to ignore what we know now is the outcome of such behaviour, and to ignore and efface from history the far more likely reality that these episodes entailed. A reality of drunken mothers abusing and neglecting their children and a reality of drunken men physically, mentally and emotionally abusing and neglecting their wives and children.

In summary, the violent culture of Australian binge drinking toxic masculinity that festers and proliferates in the alcohol sodden locker room culture and which spreads to society at large through its adulation and emulation, is a direct outgrowth of behavioural modes long tolerated in binge drinking and blood sport cultures, and which are painted in rosy colours here by Karskens.

Elsewhere the author goes to lengths to explore female agency in the face of the patriarchal histories that have predominated to date. This is praiseworthy, but I cannot help but observe that women (and children) in the past would likely have gladly exchanged increased agency, for freedom from the knuckles and buckles of their menfolk.

The chapter leaves unexplored the direct impact on so many lives then and since that socially tolerated binge drinking has had. Worse, it makes absolutely no mention of the utter devastation wrought by alcohol on Aboriginal communities over the past 250 years. Having been introduced to alcohol by Europeans, having had binge drinking modelled to them by Europeans as acceptable, Aboriginal people were then locked out of any venues in which they could consume alcohol.

Indeed, Aboriginal people and alcohol however are not described in the chapter “The Peoples Pleasures”, but in the chapter ‘Transitioning Cultures” which is puzzling. Surely if the author adopts an internalist perspective to the manner that (the author presents) people in the past enjoyed alcohol, then the enjoyment of alcohol by Aboriginal people should also be presented as a ‘People’s Pleasure”. Instead, in a thoroughly perplexing turn the author proposes that Aboriginal drunkenness at the time was frequently a pretense, a play, associated with the method of ‘washing out the barrel’ that Karskens puts forward as a chief mode by which Aboriginal people accessed alcohol. I am not aware of any statistical or historical studies that would support the notion of barrel washing as a predominant mode of Aboriginal alcohol procurement, or of their intoxication being acted.
On the contrary, an abundance of sources ranging from sketches, journals, newspaper articles and missionary reports indicate that alcohol abuse was rife among Aboriginal communities.
When we have figures showing that Aboriginal people in Australia aged between 35 and 54 are up to eight times more likely to die than their peers- and domestic violence rates even higher, with alcohol being the main culprit for both tragic figures, we must identify the cause and culprit. The same goes for tolerance and idealisation of toxic masculinity. Its really not that difficult. We can start with authors who glamorise such behaviours in the past.

[Dulcie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular. Engrossing beyond belief. Professor Karskens is that rarest of beings, a gifted academic, a gifted historian and a compelling author.
Her achievement in the People of the River is an outstanding contribution to the historical narrative of our country. Grace Karskens should be publicly recognised as a national living treasure.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough account of the Hawkesbury-Nepean. Opened my eyes to the very early colonial period (of which I thought I had detailed knowledge) and the continuation of Aboriginal Australian peoples of the Sydney area. Now to go on a few day trips to explore places in the book.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

An in-depth look, by this respected Australian Historian, at Indigenous people and settlers in the Hawkesbury/Nepean region which were the first of the areas in NSW to be settled by emancipated convicts for farming in the early NSW Colony.
I first saw Grace Karskens speak on an episode of "Who do you think you are?", where she spoke at length about my own First Fleet and Second Fleet ancestors who settled with their children in what was known as the Green Hills and is now known as Windsor.
After the March 2021 flooding that reached levels amongst the highest on record it was really interesting to read about flooding and how the people of that era coped with it and how the indigenous people handled the flooding and the inundation of colonists.
Fascinating history, some of my distant family members are briefly included, and there's probably a lot of Australians who could say the same.
I really enjoy the indigenous language being included and like to think that those place names and the language will one day be in common use again in the future.

[Dr G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found People of the River: Lost Worlds of Australia an interesting and admirable book, although I can not say I found it fascinating or, by and large, profoundly insightful. The river that is the focus of the book is far away from my home so I do not have an intrinsic interest in the region’s history, although I recognize that there is some transferability of historical themes across the country.
The thing that struck me early on was that Karskens appears to have deliberately stayed outside the History Wars, as we now know them. That is admirable; the world has enough vituperative tribal polarisation without it being the dominant feature of such a tiny corner as academic Australian history. While it is admirable, I do not think Karskens has been unequivocally successful in avoiding partisanship. It is fairly clear, regularly throughout the book, that her perspectives on indigenous peoples and, as a somewhat curious digression, feminism, are slightly leftist. Nevertheless, she does present the stories of both the indigenous peoples and the colonists and she manages to have the two stories exist side by side in her book without an explosion occurring. It is nice to find this level of calmness in a study of an area which is so often incendiary. She writes: “The historical ‘turning point’ we still find embedded in so many histories separates the Aboriginal world from the world of settlers. What actually occurred were decades of complex, overlapping histories marked by changes and new ideas but also by steady continuities, by initial expectations and slow realisations, by violence, negotiation and friendship. It’s a story of entanglement, but also one that can be viewed from both sides of the frontier.” Indeed.
The eponymous river is the Hawkesbury-Nepean system to the north of Sydney, the area where colonists first made a success of farming. While the book is a study of the region of this river system, and the long-term indigenous and shorter-term settler relations to the area, it also examines the initial convict settlement of Sydney itself, from which convicts and free settlers flowed out to occupy the much more suitable farming soils of the Hawkesbury.
Karskens offers some thoughtful reflections on the nature of the European invasion of the Sydney-Hawkesbury region. Karskens frequently uses the term “invasion” to describe the arrival of the Europeans; although this is, in the context of Australian history, a politicised term, I personally do not see it as being inappropriate. The First Fleet were not invited to this land mass and they were aware of the presence of indigenous peoples there, so that surely means that this was an invasion. There seems to have been a general assumption in that era of the acceptability of taking over land. This was even the case where the land was populated by people with civilisations similar to those of the invaders, although there seems to have been a belief that such a process was even more readily justified if the indigenous inhabitants lived by different modes, these being regarded as more primitive and thus suitable for exposure to “advanced” peoples. Neither of these outlooks would be regarded as remotely morally acceptable these days. (Well, except to certain demagogues or would-be demagogues)
It is unquestionably a fact that Britain wished to occupy territory in this portion of the globe. However, beyond this level of contemporary geopolitics, there was a unique element to the occupation. Unlike many other empire-building takeovers of land, this was not undertaken with the intention of profiting from natural resources, but rather had the arcane intention of relieving Britain’s overcrowded penal system. And there seems to have been some official pessimism about the prospects of the land becoming economically valuable.
This fact led to a couple of unanticipated but ultimately vital aspects to the settlement. The first was that the new inhabitants had not chosen to migrate; as convicts, they were sentenced to transportation and were forcibly dispatched to Sydney. The second was that, at least initially, the members of the First Fleet were almost universally from Britain’s lower social classes, as either convicts or troops; there were just a few individuals of higher rank who would operate as the troops’ officers and as civic managers. This situation began to alter fairly quickly as free settlers voluntarily joined the settlement; in many cases, however, such as that of the memoirist, Alexander Harris, while these people derived from the gentry class, their appearance in Sydney reflected some darker truths.
One consequence of these situations was that there was not, in classical empire-building terms, a focus on exploitation followed by the speedy return to the motherland of the stolen wealth. The second consequence was that the convicts, even when their sentences had expired, were far from welcome back in the motherland; in fact one of the guiding principles of the whole project was to get rid of these unsatisfactory elements. Indeed, in many cases, the convicts themselves had little to attract them back to Britain.
The third consequence was that this all meant a more complicated relationship between the ex-convicts and the indigenous peoples, although neither group is likely to have understood this.
A further factor which is not raised in Karskens’s book but is certainly relevant, is that this was a period of widespread territorial expansion. The Dutch and the French had sniffed around various parts of the coast and there was suspicion that the Russians were also interested, although there is no evidence that they ever developed plans to occupy territory here. If the British had not designated Australia as their territory, it is inconceivable that no other great power of the time would have replaced it. Certainly, the concept that the land would have been left solely in the hands of the indigenous peoples through until the present time is ludicrous, much as this might offend people’s anti-racist and anti-imperialist sensitivities. Regardless of how one perceives the developmental stage of the Australian indigenous peoples at this time, they certainly did not have the capacity, either in terms of social organisation or in terms of weaponry, to withstand an invasion from any nation which was likely to undertake one.
This means, as far as I can see, that even if Britain had not decided to establish a settlement on this continent at this time, someone would have done so at some time. It is hard to imagine any radically different counterfactual.
It is certainly not the case that the Australian aborigines were the first peoples to be displaced from land they had traditionally seen as their home. Interactions between communities in Mesopotamia three millennia ago, and subsequently throughout the wider Mediterranean area are replete with instances of communities being dispossessed, and often exterminated. This is a recurring theme in human history: it is not, to modern sensitivities, an attractive theme, but it is a reality.
At this point, we can return to Karskens’s work.
The book provides a brief account of climatic impact on the land mass during pre-history and then a very thorough summary of indigenous people’s tools and the trade of these items, and their subsequent archaeological discovery. It also contains a moderately comprehensive description of indigenous lifestyle and of the people’s relationship to the land. A number of indigenous individuals are introduced, although these are necessarily almost exclusively individuals who became known to the settlers as a consequence of either conflict or collaboration. Obviously, the indigenous people had no means of writing their story at the time so it has been transmitted exclusively by oral tradition, a medium more subject to later adjustment and evolution.
The book then provides a comprehensive examination of the establishing of European farms in the rivers area, and, thus, of the interactions between Europeans and aborigines.
One of the elements I liked about Karskens’s history was that she clearly sought to be fair in her judgments of the colony’s governors and their motives, and of many settlers. She notes that “Confidence and complacency grew among settlers in the years after the troubles of 1805 and King’s successful ‘reconciliation’. They were sure that the conflicts with Aboriginal people were over: the way was open to unfettered expansion, to land-taking. Governor Macquarie himself was apparently unaware that conflict had ever occurred. He and his wife, Elizabeth, thought of Aboriginal people as harmless savages who needed protection and a kind hand to help them along the road to civilisation….Like Phillip, Hunter and King before him, Macquarie tried gestures of conciliation. And, like his predecessors, he switched his stance abruptly: if these people spurned the hand of civilising kindness, then that hand would become an iron fist.” And the many instances of settlers collaborating with indigenous groups are duly noted, and the fact that many, although not all, attacks on indigenous peoples were carried out without official sanction and, often enough, by rogue groups carrying out their own sense of vendetta. She fairly noted that one reputed “massacre” had not even happened: “In 1817, word came that warriors had killed thirteen stockmen at Five Islands (now Wollongong) for taking their women. Then it was discovered that the murders had occurred in the dream of a Sydney Elder, who had related the story with such urgency and detail that people assumed it had actually happened.” I was impressed with the fact that Karskens exposed the ahistoricity of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River which cobbled together bits and pieces from different places and different times in order, I would suggest, to convey a more pungent moral outrage.
I did feel some irritation with the number of times that Karskens made assumptions about the feelings or the motivations of indigenous groups. Obviously, there is much we cannot know of individuals’ feelings and thoughts from so long ago, and particularly the feelings and thoughts of people who could not write them down (mind you, even written thoughts need to be judged with due scepticism). However, I am not convinced that this justifies the author’s extensive use of surmise, even with qualifications of “perhaps”, “may have” and so on: “Aboriginal people must have found the barrage of intensely spiritual and personal questions confronting. They probably thought that the British were obsessed with death”. I feel that, in reading a researched history, I am entitled to assume that the analysis will be significantly better-based than the author’s – or my own – guesses might offer.
One element of Karskens’s analysis that I could not sort out to my satisfaction was what felt like a tension between her message that the indigenous peoples were unfairly, often monstrously, mistreated, and a second message that they, due to their resilience and adaptability, in fact, survived. Clearly, the two are not mutually exclusive; however, in terms of an overall theme, I do find the two sit somewhat uneasily next to each other.
A further uncertainty I had related to her feminist re-adjustment of indigenous women’s position in their society. This again seemed to rely heavily on surmise, tinged with a political perspective, and I suspect that we need to wait for a more objective and thorough account before we accept her revision.
Notwithstanding my quibbles, I would regard this book as an earnest and honest, and thorough and valuable study of its topic. It did not have a lot that fitted my needs or even my interests but, regardless, I consider it worthy and would happily recommend it to anyone whose interests made it pertinent.

[Tim Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s taken me months to read this behemoth, but it’s been worth it. This book was magical, showing me a whole new side to Australian history, particularly the story of relationships between European settlers, white natives, and indigenous. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches, but it doesn’t just focus on the bad, instead it’s a well rounded social and cultural history of what was essentially the beginning of modern Australia.

Winner of the PM’s 2021 Literary awards (History), 2021 NSW Premier’s book awards (history) and the 2021 Wallace Award for Agricultural History (USA).

If anyone has watched the recent SBS series “The Australian Wars”, you might recognise Grace Karskens as one of the talking heads.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

'People of the River' is a comprehensive examination of the history of settlement on the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers in the western part of the Sydney basin. It takes us from pre-history to the early-mid 19th century and considers both the indigenous inhabitants and the settlers who arrived after colonisation of Sydney from 1788. It tells of the effects of white settlement in the area on the indigenous people and their resistance, part of what has been called 'The Frontier Wars' - a piece of Australia's history that has been largely ignored and must be recognised.
Due to its comprehensive nature, the book can be at times repetitive and it is easy to lose track of who's who in the narrative. However, it is a book that shines a light on our history and should be widely read.

[Reneer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just sat down to have a flick through this on a Friday night, and just could not stop. I wish I could give it 10 stars! As always Grace has painted a vibrant and vivid picture this time of the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers and their importance Aboriginal people and early colonists.

A must read.

[Louise Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains such a mountain of thought-provoking research and theories that I have now read it twice. The reader is left in no doubt that this book presents us with important history, beautifully told, imploring us to integrate all aspects of often painful history to face up to ourselves as Australians. In its 525 pages, the grand sweep of its ideas intermingles with a great deal of detail.

Because my own forebears (Robert Forrester and his wife Isabella Ramsay, Paul Bushell and his first wife Jane Sharp, and David Brown and his wife Eleanor Fleming) were at the Hawkesbury in the 1790s, I took a particular interest in the chapters describing the river and its environment in the centuries before 1788 and in its earliest days of European settlement. In my book 'Sentenced to Debt: Robert Forrester, First Fleeter' I have a different take on the standard portrayal of Forrester as a dangerous killer in 1794 - especially as his wife Isabella Ramsay tried to protect three young Aboriginal boys in 1799, not mentioned by Karskens.

As so much is already in print about the Windsor area, this book focuses heavily on the Nepean section of the river (upstream of Windsor), and the area below Sackville, where the river reaches its hazardous, flood-creating choke point well downstream of Windsor. Many family historians will appreciate this emphasis.

I found it hard to read the chapter headed 'The People's Pleasures', as the Hawkesbury region and its lifestyle habits, especially with alcohol, fostered an aspect of Australian culture that has always offended me. I felt uncomfortable that these habits were somewhat glorified in this book. Likewise, the male-dominated society beginning in this country in 1788 still adversely impacts societal attitudes towards women in Australia. We have a long way to go before binge-drinking and mysogyny is not something to encourage and boast about.

'People of the River' is the well-deserved winner of the Australian History category of last year's Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Sometime in the summer of 1793-4, a small group of people—men, women and children—appeared on Dyarubbin, the river.’

Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, is where two worlds, with very different histories and views of land use and occupancy, collided. British felons, transported to Australia to serve their sentences, were here to settle. The Aboriginal people, who had occupied Dyarubbin for at least 50,000 years, were tied to the land spiritually and culturally.

In this book, Ms Karskens ‘explores worlds that were lost to history and public understandings.’
While Dyarubbin became a successful farming frontier for European settlers, it had a significant impact on the Aboriginal peoples who lived there. A steady, slow process of violence, of alienation and theft of Aboriginal children, of annexation of the river lands followed. And yet, as Ms Karskens writes, Dyarubbin’s Aboriginal people remained and still live on the river today.

‘The earliest British explorers and arrivals assumed that Aboriginal people were one society, speaking the same language, across the entire continent.’

While I found this book interesting, especially the explanation of how the small farms using common land were used in the colony just as they were being abolished in England, this reflects my European history, not that of the Aboriginal people. I wanted more. Can these histories be integrated so neatly? I am not (yet) convinced.

However, I confess to knowing very little of the history of the Dyarubbin (Hawkesbury), and I learned quite a lot about colonial settlement and history. Now I am wondering about the Aboriginal history and how (and by whom) this account can be presented.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[James Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the level of detailed historical research in Grace Karskens' colonial history books, 'The Colony' (2010) and 'People of the River' (2020) is a remarkable achievement, the outstanding quality of both books for me, as a reader, is that of her writing. These are beautifully written, easily readable books that so often take on a conversational tone when going into the deepest details of a particular topic.

Very few historians are so readable, so enjoyable, so lucid.

I managed to read these books in the wrong order. I heard Karskens being interviewed about People of the River on ABC radio, and on the strength of that enthralling half-hour I ordered the book. I had an extra motive to drive my interest. In my family history research I found one of my favourite ancestors of all, a convict woman who ended up running pubs in Windsor back in the early days. Sure enough, she is in Karskens' book a couple of times. Apparently her pubs were favourite haunts for illegal boxing matches and all the gambling and other dodgy goings on back then.

And that sums up the reach of Karskens' research. Everybody who lived there – Indigenous, convict, settlers, officials, toffs, publicans, farmers and everyone in between – is faithfully researched and understood, and her observations and conclusions about how life was in those early days have changed my outlook thoroughly.

If you think you know your colonial history and haven't read Karskens, prepare to have a great many of your preciously held myths busted, and busted in a beautifully written style.

[Denise Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://denisenewtonwrites.com/?p=2487

Ms Karskens is a gifted writer and her histories are engaging, lyrical and deeply moving – if you have read her earlier work, The Colony, about the history of the Sydney region, I am sure you will agree.

Along with her research for this book, the author has also been involved in a project with Dharug knowledge holders and fellow historians, that aims at re-discovering and reinstating the Dharug place names of the region. I am so glad to learn that the town I lived in for ten years, Richmond, has a much older name: Marrengorra.

I struggle to keep this post about People of the River brief – there is so much to enthuse about and so many amazing stories here. If you, like me, enjoy learning more about the real history of our country, this is a must-read. I lingered over it for several months – it’s a hefty book at 525 pages (not including appendices) but such a joy. I finished it with a satisfying sense that I now have a better understanding of the corner of Australia that has been so personally meaningful to me
People of the River: Lost worlds of early Australia: Australia's Earliest SettlersGrace Karskens

[Jaqui Lane · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in learning more about Australia before the arrival of Europeans, especially the area we now know as the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment and surrounding areas, this book is for you.
It's a scholarly book with detailed references, maps and photographs.

It explores the Aboriginal communities of this area, their early interactions with Europeans, good and bad (for them), and how they lived from and with the land.

I couldn't help thinking that Sydney's planners should have read this book BEFORE they planned all the residential areas west of Castle Hill, at Windsor, Penrith and beyond. It's always been a flood plain, and always will. Current flooding is just the natural way of this land.

[Rebecca Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

The insights in this book go far beyond the story of indigenous and colonial history of the Hawkesbury Nepean area. It’s the story of an ancient continent and the impact of European takeover of that land and its people. But it’s a nuanced story with many instances of different people working together at the same time others were killing each other. Loved the focus on the key role of language on those interactions.

[Rowena Eddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very readable and comprehensive account of the Dyarubbin (Nepean/Hawkesbury) River since 1788. It is full of interesting information about the groups that lived there from the Darug and Darkinjung to emancipists, soldiers and free settlers. These groups did not live together peacefully, and there were class conflicts as well as racist ones. This is not a book for idle reading, it is more like a text book

[William Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, Karskens does a fantastic job. In this she wonderfully tells the history of the Hawkesbury-Nepean history from pre-colonial to early settlement. Not particularly up my alley, but highly useful for an essay I had to write. Very well written.

(Lia here - he made me read this one out loud to him in the car. It was quite the read.)

[Keryn Coulter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book .. well written and thorough research. Highly recommend it if you are interested in Australian History.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book. Brings to life the early colonial times focusing on the relations between the white settlers and the local aborigines.

[Jean Nicholson · Rating 3 out of 5]

i skip read this book as it was very long but both dull and interesting. I have since looked at the rocks as I travel.

[Charlie Bland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A piece of scholarship to cherish.

[Dina Jenkinson]

Discussion of the early settlement of Sydney area mostly during Governor Arthur Phillips time. Heavily referenced and written in chapters by subject matter.

[Ben James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. Meanders a bit in the last two parts, becoming less focused on the river.

[David Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A history of the Hawkesbury/Nepean Rivers, "a masterpiece of historical writing that takes your breath away... The story sparkles with warmth and vitality. I don't think we have anything quite like this in Australian literature." Prof Tom Griffiths.
Highly recommended. a fascinating and very readable 500+ pages.

[Simon Pockley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An old friend lent me his copy of People of the River by the rigorous historian Grace Karskens. It's a beautifully written and thoroughly engaging account not only of Nepean/Hawkesbury river history but also of manifold family histories and their complex inter-relationships. Karskens personalises so many of her observations through family stories from both an Aboriginal perspective and the white settlers. It begins with what the river's ancient geology can tell us about Aboriginal occupation and deftly shifts into the complex consequences of European invasion.

Having recently read Pemulwuy, The Rainbow Warrior by Eric Willmot, I question whether Grace Karskens adequately covers the extent of Aboriginal resistance to white settlement which, although mentioned, is largely omitted. If Eric Willmot is to be believed, then Pemulwuy and other warriors went very close to ridding NSW of the invaders in his 12-year war.

There are dimensions of this book that are part of my own family history. As a descendent (on my mother's side) of Colonial Secretary, Evan Nepean and his brother, Nicholas Nepean of the NSW Corps as well as (on my father's side) Governor Macquarie's ADC, Captain John Antill, our family is descended from what Grace Karskens calls the colonial elite. But we also have convict forebears. How fascinating and just that today the new elite are those who are descended from the dispossessed Aboriginal clans. Like many other Currency girls, my great-great grandmother, Selina (nee Antill) married at 16. Over 9 generations our family has developed intimate enchantments with different Australian places. My own enchantment with the Warrumbungles, in north-western N.S.W, is articulated in In Place .

Karskens delves into why the Currency generation should despise the new British settlers. A tension that continues to this day with entitled British migrants pontificating from a position of perceived superiority. However, for those who saw beauty...

At-homeness and a passionate attachment to this country were articulated still more clearly among the next generation, who identified strongly with their river birthplaces, families and communities, and called themselves Australians. p. 275

Nevertheless, the dispossession on which this new sense of belonging was based, extended to the prevailing notion that Aboriginal culture is/was somehow fixed and therefore doomed. The dynamism and flexibility of Indigenous culture is still largely ignored today, with many lamenting the loss of traditional cultural practices.

Aboriginal people continued their own cultural practices and movements within 'settled' areas for decades, a tenacious and practical form of resistance. But they also adopted and transformed some of the settler's pleasures and participated in others:..p.430

Just when I began to wonder if this book was becoming slightly plodding I found myself enthralled with the description of songs as connective events. In 1933, on the edge of Australia's western MacDonell Ranges, my father witnessed the last great pre-contact gathering of Nalliae, Pintubi and Loritcha groups. During a corroboree the Nalliae sang a song (among many others) referred to as the Duck Flying Away song. Not only was it rhythmically remarkable in that it was clear to all that it was about the flight of ducks as they circle a water hole, but it was sung in an old language no-one understood. My father speculated that it may have been a relic of a more sophisticated period. Karskens provides another explanation:

Songs also spread language far across Country, for when Aboriginal people learned the words, they learned the 'dialects of the language hence the poets sprung', although they could not always understand the meaning. p.441.

[Enone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent research including multiple sources and the cross cultural exchange on the Hawkesbury is well explained. I learnt a lot.