Cirrus@Austlit

'Southeast Queensland - the region encompassing Coolangatta and the McPherson Range to the south, Cooloola and the Blackall Range to the north, and the Great Dividing Range to the west - represents one of Queensland's most significant literary landscapes. For millennia, this area - defined by mountains and waterways - contained important gathering places for ceremonies and trade, and its inhabitants elaborated the meaning of the landscape in a rich complex of stories and other cultural practices such as the bunya festivals. Colonisation disrupted but did not obliterate these cultural associations, which remain alive in the oral traditions of local Aboriginal people and, in more recent times, have surfaced in the work of writers like Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Sam Watson.' (Introduction)