Book Reviews/A Writing Journey
Tag: Australian history
Timothy Bottoms' — Conspiracy of Silence *****
This is a history of Queensland's early European settlement that I was never taught. The novel documents an era during the 1800s when pastoralists claimed millions of hectares of Queensland's interior for cattle and sheep grazing. When Aborigines objected, speared a sheep or approached waterholes they'd used for thousands of years, graziers either demanded the native police "disperse" the Aborigines or killed most of the tribe themselves.
This is a difficult truth, revealing massacre after massacre of thousands of Aborigines perpetrated by white settlers and/or native police while the state government turned a blind eye because many of the government officials had vested interests in the grazier properties.
A must read for those who don't want a glossed over version of history.
Mallee Stanley
A disappearing race
Conspiracy of Silence
European settlement in Australia
European settler history
non-fiction book
Queensland European settlement
Timothy Bottoms
5 out of 5 Indian settings
Australia and New Zealand 5 out of 5s
Canadian 5 out of 5s
Non-fiction 5 out of 5s
Other 5 out of 5s
Other Asian 5 out of 5s
YA five out of fives