This is a history of Queensland’s early European settlement that I was never taught. The novel documents an era during the 1800s when pastoralists claimed millions of hectares of Queensland’s interior for cattle and sheep grazing. When Aborigines objected, speared a sheep or approached waterholes they’d used for thousands of years, graziers either demanded the native police “disperse” the Aborigines or killed most of the tribe themselves.
This is a difficult truth, revealing massacre after massacre of thousands of Aborigines perpetrated by white settlers and/or native police while the state government turned a blind eye because many of the government officials had vested interests in the grazier properties.
A must read for those who don’t want to gloss over Australia’s ugly past.
Read and Write 