Terra Nullius

I’m doing something a little bit different today and I’m reviewing out of sequence. This was not the book that I read after “Joe Cinque’s Consolation“. This is a book that I read just this week, and I think that today, 26 January, is the right day to review it. I’ve just come home from a rally and I’m ready to dive in.

This photo was taken at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy during the Invasion Day march on 26 January 2018 and this artwork is from one of the box planters there.

“Terra Nullius” by Noongar woman and author Claire G. Coleman is a novel set deep in the bush. Jacky, a Native, has absconded from the Settler farm he works on as an unpaid servant and is running for his life. Sister Bagra runs her school for Natives with an iron fist, but word of her approach to discipline has reached the Church and a senior representative is on his way to investigate. Esperance is a free Native, evading the Settlers with her Grandfather and community by moving camp deeper and deeper into the desert. However, the constant moving is taking its toll and Esperance fears that the Settlers will eventually catch up with them.

Honestly, the less I say about this book the better. This is really one of those kinds of books where you should really dive in cold and experience it fresh. Coleman is a wildly creative and clever writer, and this book is brilliantly crafted and exceptionally well-researched. Coleman draws upon the massacres and the Frontier Wars, as well as colonial accounts of invasion, settlement and occupation to create a story both familiar and unique.

This is a book that facilitates deep empathy and I feel like on this day, if there is any book you should pick up and read, give this one a try.