American author Marlo Morgan claimed she spent four months in outback Australia with a group of Indigenous people. She wrote a book about her purported experiences and self published it in America with the title Mutant Message Down Under in 1991. The rights were sold to HarperCollins but the book’s claims were found to be false and HarperCollins republished the work as fiction. A second work by Morgan, Message from Forever, was published as fiction in 1998. Both works are considered exploitive of Australian Indigenous culture. It is believed that Morgan spent three to four months working in a Brisbane, Queensland, pharmacy in 1985 and may have spent a short time in Sydney, New South Wales.
Sources: Janine MacDonald, 'Disgraced Author Offends Again', The Age (6 January 1999): 6; Robert Eggington, 'Mutant Message Down Under', Dumbartung website (sighted 10/12/2013); Cath Ellis, 'Helping Yourself : Marlo Morgan and the Fabrication of Indigenous Wisdom', Australian Literary Studies, 21(4), (October, 2004): 149-164
