'When Jimmy Governor, known as a hard worker who played a good game of cricket, married Ethel Page in 1898 he was challenging a code. For Ethel Page was a white women and Jimmy Governor's skin was black. Two and a half years later, the cost of that challenge was nine murders and three judicial executions.'
'Jimmy and Joe Governor were the last proclaimed outlaws in New South Wales. With their friend Jack Underwood they killed five people at Breelong on 20 July 1900. In the following days they killed another three adults and a child and went on an armed rampage. They committed at least one robbery on most days of the rampage, laid false trails for their pursuers, and contrived close encounters from which they retired with guns blazing or simply vanished.'
'It took three months, a manhunt involving 2000 civilians and police, and a 3000 km chase through rugged country on the Queensland border, to stop them.'
'What prompted such violence, such thirst for revenge? Who were the Governors and their pursuers? And what really happened during the largest manhunt in Australian history?' (Source: Publishers website)
The Urgency of Now
Sydney
:
HarperCollins Australia
,
2017
10075328
2017
single work
single work
biography
'Australia is poised at a critical moment of its history - but the time to act is now. Since publishing Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan knows this is not where the story ends. Everywhere he goes, he is asked the same questions: What can we do? How can we change the story? In The Urgency of Now, Stan weaves a story of history, memoir, politics, struggle, survival and hope. Expressing a cautious optimism, he wants to show us that there is something we can all do, that there is a path forward, a way towards true reconciliation. For Stan, the creation of the Australian nation and the repression of the indigenous people is integrally woven together...' (Publication summary)
