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'On a Barbarous Coast is an alternative retelling of Captain James Cook's story co-written by Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick in the tradition of imagined histories.
'We were becoming the wild things we most feared, but could not see it at the time.
'On a night of raging winds and rain, Captain Cook's Endeavour lies splintered on a coral reef off the coast of far north Australia. A small disparate band of survivors, fracturing already, huddle on the shore of this strange land - their pitiful salvage scant protection from the dangers of the unknown creatures and natives that live here.
'Watching these mysterious white beings, the Guugu Yimidhirr people cannot decide if they are ancestor spirits to be welcomed - or hostile spirits to be speared. One headstrong young boy, Garrgiil, determines to do more than watch and to be the one to find out what exactly they are.
'Fierce, intriguing and thoughtful, On a Barbarous Coast is the story of a past and future that might have been.
''Australia's "origin" story brilliantly re-imagined, in which Indigenous Australians rightfully assume their central place.' Susan Johnson, author of The Broken Book' (Publication summary)
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Notes
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Epigraph: About eleven, the ship struck upon the rocks, and remained immoveable. We were, at this period, many thousand leagues from our native land (which we had left upwards of two years). and on a barbarous coast, where, if the ship had been wrecked, and we had escaped the perils of the sea, we should have fallen into the rapacious hands of savages. - Endeavour journal of artist Sydney Parkinson.
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Dedication: To all those generations gone, for what might have been, and to all those generations to come, who might imagine a different future.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Dyslexic edition.
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
