Cirrus@Austlit

'...this section addresses what was, symbolically, at least, undoubtedly the most significant event in the recent history of indigenous Australia: the 1992 High Court 'Mabo' decision, which confirmed the ongoing validity of native title. Tragically Mabo appears to have had relatively little impact on Australian culture (just as it has had only a minor impact on the real practices of restoration of indigenous land ownership). One of the few literary texts to have directly registered the invisible seismic reverberations of Mabo was Andrew McGahan's The White Earth (2004) which this chapter analyzes in terms of the text's domination metaphor, that of disease.' (From author's introduction, Imaginary Antipodes : Essays on Contemporary Australian Literature and Culture 13)