Unsettled: a journey through time and space

Included in the books written by Australian author Kate Grenville are a number of historical fiction novels where sometimes the main characters are members of her family. Her family history in Australia goes back to convict times so many generations of her family have lived in this country. In Unsettled: a journey through time and place, Kate Grenville analyses her family story by exploring the areas where family members once lived and examining their possible relationships with the land that was their home and with the indigenous people who originally lived in the bush but is now an area of largely non-indigenous settlement.

On this road trip of discovery the author travels through parts of New South Wales where members of her family lived. She discovers that some had had encounters with indigenous Australians though for most there is no proof. However, stories of events were often covered up. Kate Grenville contemplates what it must have been like for the indigenous people to have to change their way of life when Europeans arrived in their country. She also reflects on the challenges faced by people like her ancestors attempting to make a new life in a strange land.

There is no easy solution to rectifying events of the past. At the end of the book she visits the memorial at Myall Creek where a terrible massacre of indigenous people occurred in 1838. In 2000, a plaque was unveiled at the site of the massacre. The plaque read:

In memory of the Wirrayaraay people who were murdered on the slopes of this ridge in an unprovoked but premeditated act in the late afternoon of 10 June 1838. Erected on 10 June 2000 by a group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in an act of reconciliation, and in acknowledgment of the truth of our shared history. We Remember them (Ngiyani winangay ganunga).

 Kate Grenville left the site with the belief that although we cannot undo what has been done, hopefully indigenous and non-indigenous people can work together in a spirit of reconciliation to create a better future for all. This is a book that all Australians should read and contemplate.

National Heritage Places - Myall Creek Massacre