Indigenous Immersion

For the past three days my ongoing adventures in biography have immersed me in Aboriginal culture and I attended: Indigenous Cultural Awareness course Indigenous Language Intensive Guided tour of the Mt William stone axe quarry Want to know what I learned? I'm happy to tell you, but first some context. In the course of my research I've become more and more interested in the interactions between the Macarthur family and the Aboriginal people whose lands the family colonised. The various relationships are often only hinted at but seem to have [...]

2018-03-25T13:01:26+11:00November 27th, 2016|Life|7 Comments

2014 – My Year in Books

It's that time of year when the blogosphere, literary journals and newspapers are full of lists of best books of 2014.  So, for what it's worth, here's a list of (almost) everything I've read this year for pleasure.  The comments are simply whatever small note I made (or didn't make) in my reading journal. I rarely bother to finish (or list) a book I don't enjoy.  I've reviewed some of those listed below but I only blog about books that are at least vaguely relevant to the topic of biography [...]

2018-03-21T14:55:41+11:00December 23rd, 2014|Life|0 Comments

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

Dark Emu Black Seeds: agriculture or accident?  is a short, sharp challenging book.  Not challenging because it is difficult to read - far from it - but challenging in the way it undermines everything we thought we 'knew' about Aboriginal land management before white settlement. Dark Emu is an evocative title but the text is in fact illuminating, both for the light it sheds upon Aboriginal labour, agriculture and ingenuity and for its exposure of white people's willful blindness.  Pascoe builds on the work of Bill Gammage's Greatest Estate on [...]

2018-03-21T14:56:17+11:00August 11th, 2014|Book Review|0 Comments
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