Surveying the Wild Abyss

A unique record of the Hawkesbury's Frontier War and a powerful contemplation on memory and atonement.

In this groundbreaking history of colonisation and frontier conflict in the Hawkesbury region, historian Barry Corr navigates the gaps and silences in the primary records to reveal settler amnesia, the cataclysmic nature of colonisation and the way history is remembered, or not remembered. Driven by primary source analysis of colonial records, the book is deeply informed by Corr's perspectives and community connections as an Aboriginal person who has lived most of his life in the Blue Mountains and north-western Sydney.

Surveying the Wild Abyss reinvents the way Australian history is written and asks non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians to reflect on their history and consider what the future might look like.

'Barry Corr uses the master's tools with extraordinary precision to tear down the mansions of the settler mythscape of fear, denial and concealment to assert the primacy of the first history of place, its continuity and continued insistence on truth. Beyond the most repressive celebrations of settlement Corr reconstructs an Aboriginal history that cannot be denied or silenced.' Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri poet, teacher, author and essayist from the Murrumbidgee river

'From personal story to history to critical philosophy, Barry Corr takes the Hawkesbury Frontier War to "cosmic" dimensions. More than historical facts, it is about a whole multifarious world surviving and made continuous despite the settler-colonial explosion. Take this beautiful book with you and sit and contemplate everything that flows with the Dhurabang river...' Stephen Muecke, Nulungu Research Institute, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Broome

'A vibrant and incisive contribution to Australian history from the perspective of events on the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers. We cannot be Australians if we do not know our history. Do not cringe from knowledge; allow it to find a home within you.' Bruce Pascoe, author of Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture

'This is an important book. It makes a valuable contribution to the history of the relations between the First Nations and the British colonists. Barry Corr's focus is on the Hawksbury River between 1788 and 1816. What he has presented us with is a brilliant study based on impeccable scholarship on the one hand and a profound knowledge of the country in question. And time and place matter because what happened then and there was to be replicated across the continent for over a hundred years. His investigation of the mentality of the colonists brings us up to the present and out into the wider world in an era of decolonisation.' Henry Reynonlds, author of Truth-Telling: History, sovereignty and the Uluru Statement