The First White Man single work   short story   historical fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 1937... 1937 The First White Man
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Notes

  • Editor's note: An unusual story, in which the famous author of Sheepmates, Black Waterlily, Desert Saga and Australia Through the Windscreen recalls the tragic Burke and Wills Expedition, and gives us a glimpse of it through the eyes of an Aboriginal.
  • Author's note: When I was living off my rifle and traps on Cooper's Creek, it was old Kuddramitchi who taught me the difference between a day-old and a week-old dog-track, and the difference between those and a trail an hour old. It was Kuddramitchi and his sophisticated son 'Jimmy Harrison', who between them, taught me the Yantawonta language and gave me that insight into the blackfellow's psychology that enabled me to produce Desert Saga and this story. In Duddramitchi I had a survivor of the tribe that witnessed the penetration of their land by the first white men to cross south - north, and over on the Wills in N.W.Q. I was fortunate in knowing ond Silver, the [abo], who as a boy, escaped by shamming dead from the Suliman Creek massacre by whites as a reprisal for the spearing of two white men.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Australian Journal vol. 72 no. 850 1 January 1937 Z1633697 1937 periodical issue 1937 pg. 40-47
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Australian Journal Story Book Ronald Campbell (editor), Melbourne : 1954 11004742 1954 anthology short story

    R. G. Campbell compiled this anthology in 1954, hoping to publish a collection of the best short stories he had first published in the pages of the monthly story magazine, the Australian Journal. A letter accompanying the typescript anthology suggests that it was submitted to Beatrice Davis at Angus and Robertson, but the anthology was never published and Davis's response has not survived.

    Melbourne : 1954

Works about this Work

In Passing 1937 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , 1 January vol. 72 no. 850 1937; (p. 102-103)
In Passing 1937 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , 1 January vol. 72 no. 850 1937; (p. 102-103)
Last amended 9 Oct 2009 09:47:26
Settings:
  • Innamincka, North East South Australia, Far North South Australia, South Australia,
  • Kanowna, Goldfields area, Southeast Western Australia, Western Australia,
  • Diamantina River, South West Queensland, Queensland,
  • Georgina River, Central West Queensland, Queensland,
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