As a young reader, Patricia Wrightson was one of my favourite authors. But in this short piece I wrote for the Australian Women Writers Challenge, I reevaluate Wrightson's use of Indigenous culture. Drawing on Aboriginal stories and culture, Wrightson’s fictional spirit characters held all the power and mystery of 60,000 years of Dreaming – power distinctly lacking in invented colonial fantasies like May Gibb’s saccharine Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. A gifted and evocative writer, Wrightson opened my eyes (and my mind) to the possibility of magic and mystery that belonged to this place, this continent. [...]