Cirrus@Austlit

'This is a story about individuals and families that, at face value, appear to be rather ordinary—labourers, domestics, mothers, grandmothers, skippers, school children, fishermen and mechanics. But this story is anything but ordinary and their life experiences were anything but mundane: growing up without parents on a mission in far north Queensland, living on Kunmunya Mission in the Kimberley, skippering a boat along the Western Australia coast, living in Broome during the Japanese air raids, raising eleven children and fostering others, being exempted from the Act, contracting leprosy and spending time in a leprosarium. The family fished on the Fitzroy River to earn extra income, attempted to establish a community on traditional land, and were reunited with family on the other side of the continent after more than 70 years of separation.' (Introduction)