Bluff Rock: Autobiography of a MassacreThe past is a problem for us. We know certain events happened, sometimes exactly when and yet our sometimes longing for certainty cannot be satisfied . . . We tell stories about where we come from and so who we are. We change these stories sometimes minutely, sometimes radically depending upon our audiences and our task. Bluff Rockis organised around the key question- how do we know the past? Using historical material (letters, memoirs), a tourist brochure, and local histories, it focuses on the ways that the massacre(s) of Aborigines at Bluff Rock, in New England during the 1840s has been recorded and remembered. It is the author's ability to lay herself on the line that makes this a courageous and even controversial text. Schlunke, who grew up in New England area, takes this one story from early colonial Australia and looks at the many ways it is organised as a memory of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations. |
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Page 143
... Deepwater , August 6th , 1842 ( Edward to sister Carrie [ Caroline ] ) [ On the road from Tenterfield to Deepwater ] We did not see a single native ; they seldom come near a road . ' Natives ' who don't come near the road suggests a ...
... Deepwater , August 6th , 1842 ( Edward to sister Carrie [ Caroline ] ) [ On the road from Tenterfield to Deepwater ] We did not see a single native ; they seldom come near a road . ' Natives ' who don't come near the road suggests a ...
Page 151
... Deepwater Station , but there they are . And so am I. It is not a shock . I feel thoroughly grounded , as if in this discovery I have somehow finally overcome the speculative and the proven parts of this book and seen the ways in which ...
... Deepwater Station , but there they are . And so am I. It is not a shock . I feel thoroughly grounded , as if in this discovery I have somehow finally overcome the speculative and the proven parts of this book and seen the ways in which ...
Page 162
... Deepwater ; they may have been strangers to Irby , but not to all his workers . Perhaps the use of Deepwater - only personnel was a response to that suspected familiarity . So this was not a meeting of complete unknowns . While ...
... Deepwater ; they may have been strangers to Irby , but not to all his workers . Perhaps the use of Deepwater - only personnel was a response to that suspected familiarity . So this was not a meeting of complete unknowns . While ...
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 11 |
BLUFF ROCK | 19 |
IT HAPPENED ALONG THE HIGHWAY | 29 |
Copyright | |
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Aboriginal group Aboriginal workers actions Australia become Bluff Rock Massacre bodies Bolivia camp child colonial colour Connor convict cultural death Deepwater Station Demon Creek diary Edward and Leonard Edward Irby England Archives England Highway event family history father fire George Gipps Glen Innes granite happened head station Henry Parkes horse ibid idea imagine Indigenous Indigenous Australians invented Irby and Windeyer Irby's kangaroos Keating kill Aboriginal labour land Leonard Irby London look means Memoirs of Edward Mitchell Library murder Myall Creek Massacre narrative natives never Newbury night parrot non-Aboriginal organised particular past perhaps poem possible present produced punish punitive expedition rode settlement settler sheep shepherd shooting shot silence simply sort South Wales space squatters St Swithins story suggests Sydney Tenterfield things Thomas Tommy tourist leaflet town track tribe truth University Weaver William Brooks words writing