'This part of the Parramatta River where I walk is the western end, the part where it turns shallow and serpentine. This is not the river of historical islands and weekend sailing and houses with water views; that exists where the river breaks into the harbour further east. This is the river of narrow channels and mudflats and mangroves; of sex clubs and factories and unmarked burial grounds; of lunatics and God and disappearing buildings.' (Introduction)
'In Gail Jones’ debut novel Black Mirror (2002), young Australian biographer Anna travels to London to meet Victoria Morrell, who in the 1930s fled a Western Australian gold-mining town for Paris, where she became an artist at the fringes of the surrealist movement. Interviewing her flamboyant subject, Anna discovers that Morrell’s extravagance conceals a deep shame that her father, owner of the local Midas mine, was violently racist. His fondness for proudly comparing the depth of his mine to the inferior height of the Eiffel Tower makes her flight to Paris symbolic, more than the act of a provincial putting on airs. Positioning art as a repudiation of the corrupting colonial logic of plunder, Anna celebrates Morrell as a ‘Prospector of the Marvellous’.' (Introduction)
'I’ve worked in Aboriginal education since 2003, in different institutions and teaching capacities, and I’ve always ignored the personal impacts of my job, stuffing them down and getting on with things the way my stoic old people always did. If I ever had to talk about the harm that educational institutions cause, I’d just focus on the cultural and communal impacts, particularly on my students. But reading Munanjali and South Sea Islander Professor Chelsea Watego’s Another Day in the Colony (UQP) allowed me to admit the personal slights and to feel them rather than repressing them.' (Introduction)
