Author’s note

Over a decade ago, when our kids were still little, we went on a camping trip to Little Desert National Park. The confluence of desert, river and neighbouring small town stayed with me and, when the seed for this story emerged – out of a writing practice I’ll speak about later, and the unshakeable idea of a girl walking out of a desert into a town refusing to deal with its past – it seemed the perfect location to set this novel. While working on it, I was always conscious that a story, no matter how fictional, can impact the local community in ways that are impossible to calculate. Increasingly, my process involves spending time over a number of years on the Country I’m writing about, listening to and getting to know its communities. This was at the heart of my approach to The Desert Knows Her Name.

From the outset, I worked in consultation with the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, as well as Elders and members of the broader First Nations community. The Barengi Gadjin Land Council (BGLC) represents Traditional Owners from the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk peoples, and is the federally recognised authority to speak on behalf of the peoples on whose Country the novel is set. Over the five years it took to complete this novel, staff and board members helped me in many ways, from reading the manuscript to verifying the spelling of Wergaia language words, and the novel can only exist in its current form as a result of their assistance.

I also undertook lengthy engagement with local non-Indigenous communities in the Wimmera (north-west Victoria), including historical societies, farmers (regenerative and traditional), creative organisations, environmental experts (professional and amateur), and academics. This involved regular visits to Little Desert National Park and surrounding areas, as well as field and farm work to learn about plant species and the harvesting of seeds.

Over this time, I spoke with people who held vastly different views about the history of the Wimmera and the impact of colonisation, and what constitutes caring for Country or the land. The choices I made about the language, stories and histories to include reflect what I felt was the best way to explore this story. The responsibility for any perceived views rests with me.

Questions about the role of a non-Indigenous writer, such as myself, in writing about stolen land, and the inclusion of Indigenous characters in a work by a writer of my heritage, require more space than an author’s note (I am currently completing a doctoral thesis to investigate similar themes). Since the release of my previous novel The Crying Place, I’ve had many conversations with First Nations and non-Indigenous writers, knowledge holders, academics and readers about these questions and other related ones. Those encounters have informed this novel in multitudinous ways and have shaped how I now approach this work. A number of resources were also key. Terri Janke’s True Tracks: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Culture is an essential text for artists working across different genres, as are Creative Australia’s Protocols for Using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts. Articles that were particularly influential were Alexis Wright’s ‘What Happens When You Tell Someone Else’s Story’, Jeanine Leane’s ‘Other Peoples’ Stories’ and Evelyn Araluen’s ‘To Outlive a Home: Poetics of a Crumbling Domestic’.

Though this story is set in the Wimmera – on the traditional lands of the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk peoples – my aim was not to single out these places as unusual sites of frontier violence. The brutal colonisation of this continent occurred across the width and breath of its lands and impacted all First Peoples, its consequences both historic and ongoing. Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria, 1803-1859 (Ian Clark, Aboriginal Studies Press) provides insights into the locations and intensity of frontier violence on the Country on which this novel is set. The University of Newcastle’s digital map Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930 is an important resource, as is the introduction which outlines some of the euphemisms and silences surrounding frontier massacres. The names of perpetrators are often remembered through local street names and memorials, and are a reminder that much work remains in addressing the present commemoration of the ‘killing times’, and the ongoing silences, as part of the process of truth-telling in all its forms.

At the time of writing, the Yoorrook Justice Commission is taking submissions from individuals and organisations about historical or ongoing injustice experienced by First Peoples in Victoria. I encourage those with relevant knowledge, or access to documents or artefacts, to make a submission. For more information, see their website: yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au. Similar work in other states has been largely stalled or not yet begun due to lack of bipartisan support, particularly post-referendum. Some land councils hold amnesties on the return of cultural objects. Check their websites for updates and further information. Another option is to seek out First Nations organisations in your area that are inviting public participation in truth-telling and restorative justice.

Building on a practice I adopted while writing my previous novel, The Crying Place, the first draft of The Desert Knows Her Name was narrated out loud, using voice-recognition software to transcribe it directly on to the screen. This was completed during a two-week period on location in an isolated farmhouse on the edge of Wyperfeld National Park, and involved walking into remote, desert areas of the park to narrate specific scenes. This practice enables me to become more aware of my surroundings while I narrate, sounds other than my voice – birdsong, wind through trees – picked up by the software and ‘translated’ into words. Although these words don’t usually make any grammatical sense, they are part of the language of a place. I edit and elaborate on these interventions in ways that, I hope, create a fuller sense of the nonhuman conversations going on and help me unlearn my cultural biases.

A Pitjantjatjara Elder once said to me that this practice gets me to ‘listen to Country’. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, reading and having conversations about what it might mean to ‘listen to Country’, and whether, as a non-Indigenous person, my ‘listening’ is too distorted by cultural bias or could be considered appropriative. I’ve been so often encouraged to listen, I continue to seek ways – through my creative work, research and learning from First Nations friends and colleagues – to open myself to what this might mean, certain only of how vital this practice is to the future of us all.

Accuracy in the representation of the flora and fauna of the Wimmera was vital to the story and politics of this novel. During its writing, some of the classifications and nomenclature changed. Always by my side was Birds and Plants of the Little Desert, by Maree and Graham Goods, and Ian Morgan. It was supplemented over the years by regular conversations with the Goodses, and was the source of the spelling of plant and bird names in the novel. In 2023, BirdLife Australia reverted the Major Mitchell Cockatoo to its earlier name the Pink Cockatoo due to Mitchell’s role in the 1836 massacre at the euphemistically named Mount Dispersion. This is a reminder that the naming of things is always in flux, shifting with the politics and theories of the day. Whether a place bears some version of its First Nations name often depends on the date it was colonised, and government policy and attitudes of the time. Mount Arapiles is increasingly referred to as Dyurrite again, dual naming or renaming both ways of bearing witness to the contested histories of a place, and correcting the attempted erasure of First Nations languages, knowledges and presence. The use of terms for First Nations people in the novel and additional material is based on characters and context and, in the case of real people, how they self-identify.

Other texts that were important include: various biographies on John Shaw Neilson and collections of his work, in particular UWAP’s Collected Verse of John Shaw Neilson; Emu Stew, particularly the poem ‘Song of the Seeds’ by the late Irene Gough; and Freya Stark’s The Valleys of the Assassins. Elspeth Tilley’s seminal work, White Vanishing: Rethinking Australia’s Lost-in-the-bush Myth, set up both a creative and ethical challenge when I began this novel, and subsequent discussion with Elspeth was invaluable.

Alongside the fictional letters by Harriet Ryder, primary sources were also cited in the novel as a reminder that history is a story, and that ‘true’ accounts sometimes need to be read in a similar way as fictional ones: with an eye to character, register and point of view. Key primary sources include extracts from John George Robertson’s 1853 letter to La Trobe, which references more hilly country to the southwest of the Wimmera, but serves as an illustration of historical recognition of the devastating impacts of overgrazing; a quote about the Duff children lost-in-the-bush story from Brian Brooke and Alan Finch’s A Story of Horsham: A Municipal Century; and Uncle Banjo Clarke talking about the removal of Geoff Rose from Framlingham Mission as quoted in Tony Birch’s article, ‘Come See the Giant Koala’. The pages Neme blocks out were extracts from Granville Stapylton’s journal documenting Mitchell’s 1836 expedition to the Wimmera as they appear in The Natural History of Western Victoria. Margaret Harrison’s 1884 letter to the secretary of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines, written when Margaret was living at the Ebenezer Mission – published in Letters from Aboriginal Women of Victoria, 1867–1926 – was included with kind permission from Joanne Harrison-Clarke. The inclusion of Margaret’s letter was important as a way of bringing in an historical Aboriginal woman’s voice in her own words, and as potent evidence that women like Margaret resisted the forces of colonisation by every means they had.

LH, Wurundjeri Country, 2024.