Terra Nullius

Presents a journey across Australia's desert, and into its shocking past. This book lyrically describes its landscape, flora and fauna and geology, tells the history of the country, and reveals the shocking treatment of its Aboriginal peoples.

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In critically acclaimed "Desert Divers" and "Exterminate all the Brutes", Sven Lindqvist travelled through Africa's deserts, and unearthed the cruelty of colonialism. Now he has done the same for Australia. Lindqvist travels through the south of country, lyrically describing its landscape, flora and fauna and geology, while also telling the history of the country, and revealing the shocking treatment of its Aboriginal peoples. He catalogues some truly shocking abuses, such as the rounding up of Aborigine women for transportation to the chillingly named "Isle of the Dead" for inappropriate and often fatal syphilis treatment; and the extensive forced separation of 'halfblood' children from their families to squalid, prison-like camps. Stretching from the formation of the Australian continent 600 million years ago to the 2002 hunger strikes in the Woomera detention camp, Terra Nullius leaves us with a strong sense of Australia as a piece of earth, steeped in geological and tragic human history.