'This article expands the existing critical discussion [of Dunlop's poetry], focusing on Dunlop's best known poem, "The Aboriginal Mother", and on the fragmentary but pioneering transliteration and translation work that Dunlop performed after she moved to the Hunter Valley in 1840. Dunlop's poetry will be explored, firstly, in relation to the contemporary newspaper debate about the humanity of Indigenous people and, secondly, in relation to the literary traditions of expressive women's poetry and romantic primitivism, both of which influenced her verse' (85).