Big River Country: Stories from Elsey Station

by Francesca Merlan, Amy Dirngayg

Elsey Station has long been famous as the setting for We of the Never-Never, Jeannie Gunn's Australian classic of pioneering outback life. In Big River Country, the Elsey is revealed through the words of the country's original inhabitants, the Mangarrayi and Yangman people of the Roper River area. Their stories are of creator figures - the barramundi, the brown goshawk, the red parrot - who travelled the region and endowed the country with meaning; they describe clashes and accommodations with the station and its bosses; and speak of hopes for better times to come, when Aboriginal people can 'fixem up and run everything properly'.

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Claire Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fitting counterweight and talks back to 'We of the Never Never' in which Indigenous voices and people are literally and figuratively erased from the landscape. Instead Merlan has worked with elders to record their dreaming stories and remembrances of the impacts of colonisation - a very different truth when compared to the myth of the 'goodfella missuses' as Gunn liked to imagine herself. Instead of patronising dismissals of culture and tradition and English cultural imperialist attitudes, the reader of this book is faced with the complexities of Aboriginal belief and knowledge systems and the brutality and horror of genoicidal settler colonialism. But more than this, this book is a testament to the survival of the oldest living culture on Earth, the adaptability and resilience of Aboriginal people and their engagement with changing circumstances and ability to organise to achieve real positive change in attempting to achieve self-determination.