After their military defeat in 1745 the Scottish Highlanders suffered a worse humiliation. They were displaced from their ancestral lands and became curiosities: objects of romantic nostalgia, charity, scorn, anthropology--and emigration. This is a tale of their dispossession.
It also tells of the rout of another people, the Kurnai of Gippsland in south-eastern Australia. And prominent among those who did the routing were emigrant Highlanders like the explorer Angus McMillan. Don Watson writes about the frontier on which those two cultures met. It is a story full of tragic ironies and myths which linger to this day.
First published in 1984 and recognised as a significant revisionist work, 'Caledonia Australis' is all the more intriguing and instructive now as debate raged of Aboriginal native title, reconciliation and the way Australian history should be written, taught and understood.
Contents:
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Prologue
1. The Highlanders at Home
2. Improving the Race
3. Removing the Race
4. Highlanders at Large--The Kurnai at Home
5. Calvinists and Cannibals
6. Exploring
7. Pioneers
8. Removing Another Race
9. Civilisation at Last
Reference
Index
Review:This is a brilliant, original book ... -- Neil Acherson, Times Literary Supplement
