'Fringedweller describes the life of Robert Bropho, but as well that of nearly all Aboriginals in Australia. They live on the fringes of large and small communities in all the states under conditions of deprivation and almost unimaginable humiliation. Robert Bropho in this work takes us with him across the length and breadth of Australia, from Broome in the Kimberleys to the outskirts of Perth, to Ceduna in South Australia, and to Alice Springs and beyond in the centre. We experience what it is like to be an Aborigine, and we learn how they react to their circumstances and to the white people, and white officialdom, with whom they have to deal, and who have the power to decide the most detailed conditions of their lives. Bropho lives and breathes the wrongs of his people, and in this book we are able to grasp how such a man, with utter singleness of purpose, pleads cajoles and, sometimes, threatens, in order to bring their condition to the attention to their fellow white Australians. It is not a unique life, but what is exceptional is that for the first time we have the story told in the unembellished often ungrammatical words of one such sufferer. The book is, consequently unlike any other. The problem, Bropho says, won't go away - "We'll always be here, more numerous than ever". (Source: Inside cover)
