AustLit

Dedication: This book is dedicated to my father, Allan Clark, and the first woman prime minister of England.

Epigraph: Hatred and mistrust are the children of blindness. Sir William Watson.

Author's Introduction: Early in 1975 I took off from Sydney and travelled for almost three thousand miles around northern New South Wales. Up through Nyngan, across to Wilcannia and Broken Hill and up to Tibooburra. Back through Bourke, Brewarrina, Walgett and Collarenebri to Moree and then down through Coonamble and Gilgandra....The only blot on the whole trip was what I saw happening to the part-Aborigines in the fringe townships...So I went back up again, this time taking my children, and lived for a month in one of the small townships I had visited before. Every incident in this book is based on fact. Names have been changed and characters added to, or amalgamated with others, to make the story flow more easily, but it's important that as you read, you remember that all this is happening in Australia today. It is a violent, brutal and offensive book, and as I re-read it I am amazed that I could write in such a way. But it's the truth about a situation which Australians cannot, in all humanity, continue to ignore....Trish Sheppard Sydney 1976