Cirrus@Austlit

'The basis for Robert Clarke’s wide-ranging study of recent Australian travel writing is his contention that encounters with Australia – whether on the part of residents of or visitors to that country – are nearly always set against an experience of Black Australia that places Aboriginality at the centre of national life. “Aboriginality” and “Black Australia” are both tricky terms, as Clarke well knows, and both remain at the heart of intense, sometime fractious discussions about the protocols surrounding the acknowledgment of Aboriginal worldviews and ways of life. Simply put, neither Aboriginality nor Black Australia have a great deal to do with what Aboriginal people think about themselves; rather, both are intersubjective – if rarely fully reciprocal – formations that provide a general framework for what white people think about Aborigines and, far less often, what Aborigines think about them.' (Introduction)