Tony Birch

And I was able to go back to the text without the pretty pictures.

So I think it also functions in a way that might work more effectively with the way we understand narrative or the way we read stories.

So I actually am really attracted to it.

And of course, you know, graphic fiction, you know, the artistic work is remarkable.

Yeah, and I know this book well.

I know Tasma Walton quite well also.

It's a remarkable book, but it's such an important book.

Tasma's writing about one of her forebears, a Bunurong woman.

I think what's important here is not only the quality of the writing and the importance of the story, but as you allude to, it's also a very tragic story and aspects of it are so, so sad.

But it's so important because some people may not know this history, and they should.

We should all know this history.

And this is the history which is about, yeah, the kidnapping, murder, rape, slavery of Aboriginal women, in this case what we call the Mornington Peninsula in contemporary Victoria, but really important Bunurong country, Aboriginal women who were stolen by sealers, women who were taken to the Bass Strait Islands, particularly the Cape Barren Islands,

women who were taken onward to Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

And then in the case of this novel, and certainly in the case of Tasma Walton's forebearer, actually then taken to the other side of the country to Western Australia.

And I think that what people need to recognise that this book alludes to, one, is the incredible authority and communality of Aboriginal women within their own communities and families and their

importance as not only mothers, but as matriarchs, to the violent history of slavery and the enslavement of Aboriginal women, which is not known well enough.

And also that the legacy of these histories, so that the migration, the forced migration of Aboriginal people is often not known.

So in Tasma Walton's circumstances, she does, you know,

write the fact that this is a very important personal novel to her.

You know, here's a woman in her case who grew up in Western Australia whose country is in fact in Victoria or today's Victoria.