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Coming Events:
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Current Events:
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Recent Events:
Presented by ELTHAMbookshop, Shire of Nillumbik,
Nillumbik Reconciliation Group,
Australian Indigenous Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne,
Montsalvat & leading publishers
You can download the full Past Matters 2012 program here.
Poetic Past: Ali Cobby Eckermann in conversation with Alexis Wright
Download flyer
Ruby Moonlight
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Winner of the inaugural black&write! kuril dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowship (verse novel).
Ruby Moonlight is a historical tale set in South Australia around 1880. The main character Ruby, refugee of
a massacre, shelters in the woods where in time she befriends an Irishman trapper.
The poems convey how fear of discovery is overcome by the need for human contact, which in a tense
unravelling of events is forcibly challenged by an Aboriginal lawman. The natural world is richly observed;
Ruby’s courtship is measured by the turning of the seasons.
Ali will be in conversation with Miles Franklin winner and activist Alexis Wright author of Grog Wars, Carpentaria and Plains of Promise
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Dreaming Fiction: Marie Munkara and Nicole Watson
Every Secret Thing
Marie Munkara
When culture and faith collide . . . nothing is sacred
In the Aboriginal missions of far northern Australia, it was a battle between saving souls and saving traditional culture.
Every Secret Thing is a rough, tough, hilarious portrayal of the Bush Mob and the Mission Mob, and the hapless clergy trying to convert them. In these tales, everyone is fair game.
At once playful and sharp, Marie Munkara's wonderfully original stories cast a taunting new light on the mission era in Australia.
'told with biting wit and riotous humour'
Judges' comments, Queensland Premier's Literary Awards (2008)
Winner David Unaipon Award 2008
Winner NT Book of the Year 2010
The Boundary
Nicole Watson
An award-winning crime novel that breaks new ground in Australian fiction
Winner of the 2009 David Unaipon Award
Long ago, Meston Park in Brisbane's West End marked the city's boundary. A curfew kept its Aboriginal population outside the city limits after dark. When the park becomes the site of a multi-million dollar development, the Corrowa People vow to fight and file a native title claim. Hours after rejecting the claim, Justice Bruce Brosnan is brutally murdered.
Some believe it is the work of an ancient assassin, returned to destroy the boundary. While the investigation forces Detective Jason Matthews to confront his buried heritage, lawyer Miranda Eversely battles a sense of personal failure at the Corrowa's defeat
How far will it take her to the edge of self-destruction?
The two debut writers will be in conversation with Morag Fraser, writer, Chair of Australian Book Review and former editor of Eureka Street.
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Footy Dreaming
Marngrook is a children’s story based on the sometimes controversial theory of how Australian Rules Football developed from ‘marngrook’, a ball game played by Aboriginal people in north-west Victoria more than 150 years ago. This fictionalised story of Marngrook takes place at the foot of Duwul, the highest mountain in the spectacular Grampians region of north-west Victoria, the traditional country of people from the Djab-Wurrung and Jardwadjali clans.
Titta Secombe is descended from the the Djab-Wurrung and Jardwadjali clans of the Grampians region of north-west Victoria. She has worked for many years in education and sports programmes to develop the talents of young Indigenous Australian Rules Football players. Illustrator Grace Fielding grew up on the Wandering Mission near Perth in Western Australia. She has illustrated several children’s books and is celebrated for her traditional and contemporary art styles. In 1991, Grace won the National Crichton Award for Illustration in 1991.A Home for Bilby, written by Joanne Crawford and illustrated by Grace won the Children’s Award at the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards in 2005
The Liam Jurrah Story is an eye-witness account by Bruce Hearn Mackinnon. Known as the "Warlpiri Warrior", the "Jurrahcane" and "Cougar", Liam Jurrah is a rising star of the AFL, known for his startling displays of skill, artistry and the "deadly" impact of his football ability.This book tells the incredible journey travelled by Liam, a fully initiated Warlpiri man, from the remote Aboriginal desert community of Yuendumu to the MCG, as the first of his kind to play football at an elite level.Along the way the book describes how the author and his family came to understand and treasure the richness of Liam's Warlpiri culture. According to Martin Flanagan, ‘Liam Jurrah is like no other sports story in Australia, and possibly the world, at this time.'
Bruce Hearn Mackinnon is a senior lecturer with the School of Management and Marketing at Deakin University and a researcher in the university’s Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Community. Bruce is also vice-president of a maverick coterie, the Collingwood Industrial Magpies, an organisation committed to reconciliation between black and white Australia, and which formed a special relationship with the remote Central Australian Aboriginal community of Yuendumu in 2002. This relationship with Yuendumu led to Liam Jurrah first visiting and later living with Bruce and his family
This session is facilitated by Philip John Morrissey
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The Biggest Estate on Earth: Bill Gammage introduced by Philip John Morrissey
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia
Bill Gammage
Winner, 2011 Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards (Individual category)
Explodes the myth that pre-settlement Australia was an untamed wilderness revealing the complex, country-wide systems of land management used by Aboriginal people.
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised.
Bill Gammage is a historian and adjunct professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. He is best known as author of the ground-breaking The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War.
Chair: Philip John Morrissey
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Different Inequality
Why does our society seem to get it so wrong for remote Aboriginal communities? Why, despite decades of consultation and policy shifts, can’t governments introduce initiatives that will really close the gap? Professor Diane Austin-Broos in this special address shares her insights and experience to suggest ways to acknowledge both cultural difference and inequality to overcome this impasse. Finalist of 2011 Human Rights Awards, Literature.
Diane Austin-Broos is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Diane has particular interests in the relation between culture and economy, fundamentalism, and in the history of anthropology, both in the trans-Atlantic world and in Australia. She is the author of amongst other books Arrernte Present, Arrernte Past: Invasion, violence and imagination in Indigenous Central Australia and A Different Inequality.
Chair: Jan Aitken, Nillumbik Reconciliation Group
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Tales From the Daly River - Nauiyu Nambiyu.
Film screening: free session.
In the Monsoon season, the Daly River region is lashed by savage storms which bring the landscape and river to life. Legend says it is the Sugar Glider, traveling across the sky mischievously moving the clouds around, which brings the rain. But amidst the tropical beauty lies danger. Stories about the monsoons and the river have been told to children for generations, to teach them to have respect for the bush and to be wary of its dangers. The Wabuymem is one of these stories.
Indigenous filmmaker Steve McGregor has been making films in the Daly River region for 15 years; it is also his wife's country.
With thanks to the Black Screen program of the National Film & Sound Archive.
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Adelaide based poet Lionel Fogarty will present compelling poetic interludes between each session.
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Cost: $25.00 for a Festival Pass includes a free session on the 27th of April, morning and afternoon tea, twilight drinks.
Single sessions: $7.00. Film screening on 28th April is free.
Prepaid bookings are essential:
ELTHAMbookshop@bigpond.com
970 Main Road,Eltham
03 9439 8700
Books will be available for sale and signing.
You are encouraged to contribute generously to the Indigenous Literacy Fund with donation of books from the book stall.
We gratefully acknowledge the support given by the Shire of Nillumbik
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