Barry Corr - Surveying the Wild Abyss book launch

In this groundbreaking history of colonisation and frontier conflict in the Hawkesbury region, First Nations 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.

Surveying the Wild Abyss is driven by primary source analysis of colonial records and deeply informed by Corr’s perspectives and community connections as an Aboriginal person who has lived most of his life in the Western Sydney Aboriginal community, the book asks non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians to reflect on their history, and reinvents the way Australian history is written.

‘From personal story to history to critical philosophy, Barry Corr takes the Hawkesbury Frontier War to “cosmic” dimensions. Take this beautiful book with you and sit and contemplate everything that flows with the Dhurabang river …’ – Stephen Muecke

Barry Corr has lived most of his life near Dhurabang, the river that settler society calls the Hawkesbury and the Nepean. As a university student he was a member of Student Action for Aborigines and took part in the 1965 bus trip which has been memorialised as the Freedom Ride including follow-up trips to Walgett and Bowraville in 1965–66. He worked as a teacher and as an Aboriginal Education Consultant at a regional and state level. Living in the Hawkesbury, he is well-equipped to write on the Hawkesbury’s Frontier War.

Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, educator and editor. She is a co-director of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, co-editor of Overland Literary Journal and teaches through the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development. Her debut poetry collection, Dropbear, won the 2022 Stella Prize. Her second collection, The Rot, was awarded the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry and Indigenous Writing.