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 105
... saved ' , stolen up from death , ' rescued ' from ' wild blacks ' to become ' grateful ' and ' useful ' , ' devoted ' and successfully ' brought up ' ? But if one child could be saved , why not all of the group ? One can begin to see ...
... saved ' , stolen up from death , ' rescued ' from ' wild blacks ' to become ' grateful ' and ' useful ' , ' devoted ' and successfully ' brought up ' ? But if one child could be saved , why not all of the group ? One can begin to see ...
Page 107
... saved ' two Aboriginal women but they were saved only to be raped ? used ? by others . There was another woman ' saved ' from this massacre by another man . She was the mother of Charly , a small boy ( noted for his ' familiar and ...
... saved ' two Aboriginal women but they were saved only to be raped ? used ? by others . There was another woman ' saved ' from this massacre by another man . She was the mother of Charly , a small boy ( noted for his ' familiar and ...
Page 110
... saved child function as another mirror of whiteness , where the saving of one child proves that it is still possible to claim that the white men were operating in a moral universe ? That they were punishing a group who had committed a ...
... saved child function as another mirror of whiteness , where the saving of one child proves that it is still possible to claim that the white men were operating in a moral universe ? That they were punishing a group who had committed a ...
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