Cirrus@Austlit

'The 1960s are remembered as a time of change and upheaval throughout the Western world, including Australia. No part of the country changed more in that decade than the remote pastoral regions of the north. But in these tropical parts the winds of change did not bring the anti-war movement, the counterculture, feminism, or the other issues that preoccupied the cities. Rather, they blew down an industry, a regime, a culture that for the best part of a century had thrived on a semi-feudal system of co-dependence between the all-powerful station bosses, and large communities of unpaid Aboriginal workers and their families. In the course of a couple of years the township of Fitzroy Crossing in the remote Kimberley changed from a tiny frontier outpost, to a refugee camp with hundreds of people living in fringe camps in third world conditions. From this maelstrom a unique community emerged, with a strong ethos of cooperation and support amongst the various peoples of the Fitzroy Valley. A Town is Born complements some of Magabala's previously published titles; in particular; Moola Bulla – In the Shadow of the Mountain; Out of the Desert; You Call it Desert, We Used to Live Here; and Raparapa: Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers.' (Source: Magabala Books website:www.magabala.com)

'Growing up just as the first pastoralists were cutting a swathe through his native lands, Jandamarra is one of Australia's great tragic heroes. Station child, angry young man, police tracker of his own people and finally inspirational leader of the most successful indigenous resistance against white settlement, his life was lived on the jagged edge of change and uncertainty. This story belongs the the Bunuba people of the Kimberley-but it speaks to everyone. (Source: Publisher)

'The Noonkanbah drama from the Aboriginal viewpoint; the struggle to defend a particular piece of sacred ground against a proposed oil well, which involved the Noonkanbah people, the miners and the Western Australian Government; Amax; land rights; mining.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (1989 ed.).