Wednesday, June 29, 2011

My Library; Serpent Dust; by Debra Adelaide;




Serpent Dust by Debra Adelaide



In my view a very poetic wonderfully written story.

Excerpts from this book;

Page 67
Mrs. Twineham:"...What will become of this colony, I am unable to say, and I am moved to consider how this
bustling self important little place should ever survive, let alone prosper.

Page 86
Dyirra:"...But we'd been camped on the edge of the maiyal settlement for month, watching our fishing places swallowed up. Then our water supply, then the badagarang hunting grounds. All going or gone.

....less than moments, then our homeland was transformed into something utterly unrecognizable

Page 87
Dyirra:" Meanwhile we were still stalking backwards, still retreating, creeping, silently putting one foot behind the other with our bags and stick...

Page102
Strawberries, ten bushels of India seed corn, bamboos, quinces, oak and myrtle trees...
Six bullet molds, fife hundred and eighty-nine women's petticoats...

Page 171
Cowper:"...out here you can belong. The land holds you when you submit to it. And so I have come to the bush that looks after you, if you let it.
That's what those grubbing, tree felling, gravel scraping fools back at the settlement will never understand.
...to truly look at the land they have claimed for their own, too stupid to think beyond the scope of thir own stores and provisions...

Page 181
The Reverend MR Arthur Twineham:"....we brought the seedlings with us. Yet the trees seem to me a crude punctuation in this landscape.....while the originals, the grey and drooping gums have long been felled and turned into fuel and shelter.

Within two years of the fleet's arrival, those watchers had suffered the shocking ravages of smallpox, their numbers decimated. the disease spread to aboriginal people throughout the country with devastating results. But how did smallpox arrive in Australia?

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

There are many things that we can learn from these stories from the past. Good book :-D

Lavender and Vanilla Friends of the Gardens said...

Thank You Stephanie, I liked it very much. A book to have in the library.