This is a shocking, disturbing, hard hitting book about white colonisation and the treatment of Aborigines that makes you pause and think and realise that in some ways nothing is different today with the way First Peoples are treated. 

The book is divided into four parts, of ten chapters and there is a Preface and Afterward plus maps , illustrations both in colour and black and white, biographies,. a timeline etc BUT no index – and this is yet another biography where one is needed. It is of medium size and thickness with a glorious cover photo of giant kelp. 

Cassandra Pybus’ book is the story of a Stolen Generation,  enforced assimilation  and genocide before the terms were invented. Truganini has in some ways become an icon as ‘the last of her race‘, the Tasmanian First Peoples. The book tells of the callous settlement by British forces of Tasmania in the early 1800’s. It is a story full of duplicity and government stalling and lack of comprehension by the white people as to Aboriginal life.  Pybus’ book tries to depict the culture shock and interaction between the two cultures; one exemplified by interwoven links to Country and cooperation, the other preoccupied with prestige, prosperity and eradication of the First Peoples.  Continue reading TRUGANINI : A NEW BIOGRAPHY BY CASSANDRA PYBUS →