Islam in the Outback single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Islam in the Outback
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'On a dusty corner just before the Oodnadatta Track begins to unfurl across the centre of Australia, there is an unassuming mud-walled building on the edge of Marree, a town with a population of one hundred and fifty. Grey nomads pull up outside the general store across the road in their four-wheel drives to stock up on beer coolers and meat pies, and they barely notice the humble thatch-roofed structure. Behind them, young families clamber over the platform of the old Ghan railway, paying no attention to the building. The only identifying mark next to the dirt walls and old wooden beams is a small notice stuck on a stick in the ground, which looks like it is stencilled on in pen. It proclaims that this spot is ‘Dedicated to the memory of the pioneering Muslim cameleers and families of Hergott Springs (Marree)’. It is also the remains of the first mosque in Australia.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Griffith Review Who We Are no. 61 2018 14211968 2018 periodical issue

    'Australia was the last continent to experience the transformation wrought by new settlers arriving to make it their own. For centuries, explorers had set forth to discover lands which others already called home, but that were conquered and renamed by European seafarers. When King George III dispatched the First Fleet to Sydney in 1787, to accommodate prisoners no longer welcome in the newly independent United States, the history of British settlement (and Indigenous displacement) commenced. Reduced to a percentage on the scale of human occupation of this land, the past two hundred and thirty years would disappear – a number so small it would not even register as a rounding error. But over this short time it has become home to millions who together have forged a new Australian identity.' (Editorial introduction)

    2018
    pg. 257-265
Last amended 29 May 2020 10:29:40
257-265 Islam in the Outbacksmall AustLit logo Griffith Review
Subjects:
  • Marree, North East South Australia, Far North South Australia, South Australia,
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