Unwritten Histories

In this witty and satirical revisiting of Australia's heroic past, Craig Cormick rediscovers the contributions of indigenous Australians that have always remained unrecorded and unacknowledged—Australia's unwritten histories.

Drawing on original records of the time, he has turned the spotlight away from its traditional focus to illuminate those whom history had forgotten. Great explorers, teachers, warriors, and dreamers, who were there when Banks first saw a banksia or when Burke and Wills staggered on from Coopers Creek, have vanished simply because their stories were unrecorded, now repopulate these short stories.

The old heroes confess their darkest secrets, facing their own culpability in the destruction of societies and cultures, or blindly march towards their own fame, stamping firmly on law, conscience, and their own better judgement in the process. Make way for a new history of Australia, in which Cook fancies an ice-cream, Kennedy is mobbed by the press, and Windradvne and Landamarra, Wooredy and Trugernanna, Jacket and Johnny Mullagh act out the real past.

The combination of delicious humour and fantasy, and the true horror that must arise from any reading of our indigenous history, makes this collection at once playful and mordant, funny and frightening, and an exciting new work of Australian fiction.