People of the River: Lost worlds of early Australia

(Paperback)

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Winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Australian History 2021
Winner of the NSW Premier's Australian History Prize 2021
Co-winner of the Ernest Scott Prize for History 2021

'A masterpiece of historical writing that takes your breath away' - Tom Griffiths

'A majestic book' - John Maynard

'Shimmering prose' - Tiffany Shellam

Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, is where the two early Australias - ancient and modern - first collided. People of the River journeys into the lost worlds of the Aboriginal people and the settlers of Dyarubbin, both complex worlds with ancient roots.

The settlers who took land on the river from the mid-1790s were there because of an extraordinary experiment devised half a world away. Modern Australia was not founded as a gaol, as we usually suppose, but as a colony. Britain's felons, transported to the other side of the world, were meant to become settlers in the new colony. They made history on the river: it was the first successful white farming frontier, a community that nurtured the earliest expressions of patriotism, and it became the last bastion of eighteenth-century ways of life.

The Aboriginal people had occupied Dyarubbin for at least 50,000 years. Their history, culture and spirituality were inseparable from this river Country. Colonisation kicked off a slow and cumulative process of violence, theft of Aboriginal children and ongoing annexation of the river lands. Yet despite that sorry history, Dyarubbin's Aboriginal people managed to remain on their Country, and they still live on the river today.

The Hawkesbury-Nepean was the seedbed for settler expansion and invasion of Aboriginal lands to the north, south and west. It was the crucible of the colony, and the nation that followed.

Reviews

'Superbly researched and compellingly written' - Australian Financial Review


'A pleasure to read... This book brings into view stories of lives that were not just forgotten but have been deliberately obscured.' - Heather Goodall, Australian Historical Studies


'Reading People of the River was like attending an extended master class. Karskens literally writes her way into the country.' - Mark McKenna, History Australia

Author Bio

Grace Karskens is author of The Colony, winner of the 2010 Prime Minister's Non-fiction Award, and of The Rocks, winner of the 1998 NSW Premier's History Award. She is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.