AustLit

'I'm sitting in an office in the State Library of New South Wales with my friend Melissa Jackson, a Bundjalung woman and Indigenous Librarian. It's a sunny January afternoon in 2021 and it's her first day back in the library after the Covid-19 closures hit the previous March. I've been researching the Gai-marigal warrior Musquito since 2003 and today we are looking for a name list that I have heard about, which is supposed to tell a story of the time he was exiled from Sydney to Norfolk Island. We go through indexes and bibliographies and footnotes without finding anything. Then Melissa flicks through the computer catalogue and pulls up an image. It's a seraphic face, illuminated in the computer's glow.'' (Introduction)