MARI NAWI: Aboriginal Odysseys

(Paperback)

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This book reveals the significant role Aboriginal men, and some women, played in Australia's early maritime history. Theirs was a canoe culture and they called the foreign ships 'mari nawi', meaning 'large canoes'. With remarkable resilience, they became guides, go-betweens, boatmen, sailors, sealers, steersmen, whalers, pilots and trackers, valued for their skills and knowledge, while some, like Musquito, Bulldog and Dual, were exiled as Aboriginal 'convicts'. They sailed the Australian coast, to sealing and whaling grounds in Bass Strait, the icy sub-Antarctic and New Zealand and to international destinations like Timor, Mauritius, Bengal, Britain, Canada, Hawaii, Tahiti, San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro.