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A review by bookpossum
From the Edge: Australia's Lost Histories by Mark McKenna
5.0
This is such an interesting and thought-provoking book, with four little-known stories of interactions between First Nations people and the British people who were either passing through or seeking to settle in their lands.
The first story of an incredible trek from the coast of Victoria all the way to Sydney by a group of shipwrecked men is absolutely gripping. They only did this with the help of the many Indigenous people through whose country they were passing, and it is heartbreaking to read how quickly the story was changed by people including the Governor of New South Wales, to emphasise the one bad experience the men had in order to turn this into a story of brave white men surviving the savages.
As Mark McKenna says at the end of the book: For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.
We need more books about our history like this one.
The first story of an incredible trek from the coast of Victoria all the way to Sydney by a group of shipwrecked men is absolutely gripping. They only did this with the help of the many Indigenous people through whose country they were passing, and it is heartbreaking to read how quickly the story was changed by people including the Governor of New South Wales, to emphasise the one bad experience the men had in order to turn this into a story of brave white men surviving the savages.
As Mark McKenna says at the end of the book: For any of us to develop a truly honest and informed historical consciousness in Australia requires a double-act: to hold both the violent dispossession of Indigenous Australians and the steady emergence of a society built on equality, democracy and freedom from racial discrimination in our imagination at the same time, and to do so by hearing both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.
We need more books about our history like this one.