- I’m late to this multi award-winning book, first published in 2014, and now in a new edition in 2018.
- It is a magnificent work, and an exceptionally well researched and written story of the complexity and sophistication of the civilisation, economy and social cohesion of Australia’s Aboriginal people for at least 80,000 years.
- Extensively quoting from the diaries and journals of the early colonial explorers, surveyors and pastoralists, Pascoe demolishes the myth of the spear carrying ‘hunter-gatherer’ and details the extensive agricultural and aquaculture practices of our first peoples, their housing, food, storage and preservation, their expert management of the land and use of fire, and, critically, their ability to construct societies that were democratic and peaceful.
- There are so many quotable lines in this beautiful book. I underlined paras on virtually every page. Here’s an example:
‘If we look at the evidence presented to us by the explorers, and explain to our children that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate, and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity, it is likely that we will admire and love our land all the more.’
- This book should be compulsory reading on every school curriculum. It is that good and that important.
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