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 37
... perhaps he was meaning ' throw ' in a more general sense — perhaps the bodies were rolled off the top . Why not pushed ? Is it simply the embroidery to make a ' better ' tale ? To make incomprehensible monsters of the colonists ? To ...
... perhaps he was meaning ' throw ' in a more general sense — perhaps the bodies were rolled off the top . Why not pushed ? Is it simply the embroidery to make a ' better ' tale ? To make incomprehensible monsters of the colonists ? To ...
Page 53
... perhaps not . Possibly three generations of life in Australia was considered safe enough . Perhaps this is what happens to ' ethnic identity ' after too many years ? The authenticity of it all just runs away . Constant mutation will not ...
... perhaps not . Possibly three generations of life in Australia was considered safe enough . Perhaps this is what happens to ' ethnic identity ' after too many years ? The authenticity of it all just runs away . Constant mutation will not ...
Page 119
... perhaps ? His obvious , frightening strength insisted that he was given a place through his violent taking of place , and yet he was tormented . Where was this torment finally cast ? Into the bodies of the Indigenous . They had to be ...
... perhaps ? His obvious , frightening strength insisted that he was given a place through his violent taking of place , and yet he was tormented . Where was this torment finally cast ? Into the bodies of the Indigenous . They had to be ...
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