From the Edge: Australia's Lost Histories

· Melbourne Univ. Publishing
4.2
4 reviews
Ebook
251
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

In March 1797, five British sailors and 12 Bengali seamen struggled ashore after their longboat broke apart in a storm. Their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove were stranded more than 500 kilometres southeast in Bass Strait. To rescue their mates and to save themselves the 19 men must walk 700 kilometres north to Sydney.

That remarkable walk is a story of endurance but also of unexpected Aboriginal help.

From the Edge: Australia's Lost Histories
recounts four such extraordinary and largely forgotten stories: the walk of shipwreck survivors; the founding of a 'new Singapore' in western Arnhem Land in the 1840s; Australia's largest industrial development project nestled amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara; and the ever-changing story of James Cook's time in Cooktown in 1770.

This new telling of the central drama of Australian history ;the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, may hold the key to understanding this land and its people.

Ratings and reviews

4.2
4 reviews
A Google user
March 11, 2017
This is a great addition to the library of the general reader. These truly are forgotten histories that Mark McKenna has brought back to life. They are important stories that enable the reader to gain a greater understanding of our shared history. Australia has managed to whitewash our history by only telling the shiny happy stories, but McKenna helps us to realise that the great achievements of Australia's colonial history could not have been achieved without brutility and, in some places, wholesale murder. McKenna writes in a style that is accessible to the general reader but that will probably irk some academic historians. Some may see this book as furthering the 'black armband' view of history, but let's face it, this country does have a shameful history. McKenna seems constrained by his obvious wanting to tell these important stories to the general reader, and by his need to keep the self-important academic community satisfied at the same time. He's not quite Blainey but, once he realises that academic historians are necessary but not actually as important as they think they are, he will go far.
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Paul Mariager
December 31, 2018
An enthralling and revealing read. Reading this took me on an emotional roller-coaster, swinging this from wonder and admiration to disappointment and scorn. Some of the imperfections and ironies that litter the history and make up of Australia were revealed to me. I felt the power in acknowledging this and the understating an airbrushed version of Australian history benefits no one. I realise attitudes are deep-seated however: Indigenous v non-Indigenous; city v country, as I was reminded reading this. I feel Australia would be a better, more tolerant place, if its citizens had a broader and deeper understanding of our shared history. In the words of the author: "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 hearing both the indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives." So please, give this a read and take it all in.
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About the author

Mark McKenna is one of Australia's leading historians. His most recent book, An Eye for Eternity: The life of Manning Clark (MUP) won five national awards, including the 2012 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. He is also the author of Looking for Blackfellas' Point: An Australian History of Place (UNSW Press), which won the Book of the Year and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction in the 2003 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. His essays, reviews and political commentary have appeared in The Monthly, Meanjin, ABR, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian.

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