Flipping the script: ‘Looking from the North’ by Henry Reynolds
Have you ever seen a map of the world that is not the standard Mercator-type, but which depicts the continents and their positions in a way that is more true to life? If so, you’ll know that slightly unsettling feeling of gazing at a depiction of our planet that just looks weird, or so different to what you are used to, as it challenges deep assumptions about world geography.
Reading Looking from the North felt a bit like that for me. Having been born, raised and educated (and lived the majority of my life) in the southeast of Australia, my ‘take’ on our national story was, I see now, very much from a ‘looking from the south’ perspective. This book shook that up in a mildly unsettling, but also refreshing, way.
Historian Henry Reynolds is known for his truth-telling take on Australia’s national stories, and this book continues in that vein, with his hope that this nuanced view can shift mainstream Australian thinking, to reassess our story of colonisation but also understand our distinctive variant of decolonisation. (p5) He traverses events in Australia from the British act of colonisation in 1788 through to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and everything in between.
Some of the major themes and events he considers really made me stop and think, including:
- Colonisation happened in two distinct phases, the second of which took place largely in the vast ’empty’ centre and north and played out very differently from the earlier colonisation of the south. Because the British government had handed over control of the new colonies of Queensland (1859) and the Northern Territory (to the colony of South Australia in 1863), moral responsibility to First Nations people therein was also handed over.
This is why the settlement of northern Australia is different. It was an Australian, not a British venture. For better or worse it is our responsiblity. We cannot escape from it or from its latter-day consequences with which we still live. (p15) - ‘Opening up’ land in the north for white settlers carried with it the same devastating consquences for the First Nations there. The hunger of Europeans – for land, gold, ownership – was the same as it had been half a century before, but the way it was assuaged sometimes differed from the south.
In both cases, though, The insouciance of both government and settlers was staggering. So too was their ignorance. They knew so little about the country itself and the people they were so ruthlessly usurping. (p23) - There were killing times (sometimes known as ‘frontier wars’ or appropriately, the ‘Australian wars’) in both north and south, though the environments, the demographics and the trajectories differed. But the litany of resistance, violent reprisals, and hideous atrocities are depressingly similar. In some places peaceful resolution, of sorts, did eventuate, though they tend to be less well-known: The attempt by both settler and First Nations communities to manage the process of reconciliation as the era of open warfare came to an end has rarely been studied by Australian historians. (p39)
- The pastoral industry in the tropical north was completely dependent on the resident First Nations workforce. (p62) Though this fact did not translate into decent payment or working conditions.
- Readers of David Marr’s forensic and harrowing work Killing for Country (2023) (my review) will no doubt agree with Reynold’s view that the story of the Native Police represents one of the most egregious, shameless chapters in the history of Australian colonisation. (p69)
- When Australia became a federated nation, a growing national obsession with racial purity led to the disgracefully long-lived policy of White Australia, under which people of Asian, Pacific Islander, and other ‘non-white’ backgrounds were ruthlessly expelled or barred from the country. This included many who had made their homes and had families in northern centres like Cairns, Darwin, Thursday Island, and Mackay. It also included labourers who had been brought here (some willingly, some less so) in the so-called ‘Blackbirding’ era, to work on sugar plantations. Not surprisingly, the expulsions and bans also had devastating effects on the economies and communities involved.
- This period also coincided with a convenient sort of amnesia about even the recent past, because The new nation hungered for worthy foundation stories to nurture collective pride. Peaceful conquest of country was a far more appealing story than bloody conquest for the land. (pp77-78)
- The White Australia policy did not die a much-deserved death until 1973. By then world opinion on issues of race was shifting and moves in international spaces, such as the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965) pushed national governments to enact laws to protect citizens from discrimination.
- Meanwhile, the Indigenous land rights movements were gathering force in Australia. A rocky road; but the book outlines the Yirrkala Bark Petitions (discussed in Clare Wright’s wonderful 2024 Naku Dharuk (my review), the Mabo and the Wik cases as significant in the gains made in the second half of the twentieth century.
I have listed so many points here to show just how much Reynolds includes in this book, which is nevertheless a slim and easy-to-read publication. If you enjoy a book that will teach you something new, give a different perspective on familar events, and continue the important work of truth-telling about our nation’s history, you will enjoy Looking from the North.
Looking from the North was published by NewSouth in 2025.
- Colonisation happened in two distinct phases, the second of which took place largely in the vast ’empty’ centre and north and played out very differently from the earlier colonisation of the south. Because the British government had handed over control of the new colonies of Queensland (1859) and the Northern Territory (to the colony of South Australia in 1863), moral responsibility to First Nations people therein was also handed over.
Humble life lessons: ‘Parting Words’ by Benjamin Ferencz
On Ben Ferencz’s website, his last book Parting Words is introduced as follows:
How many people do you know grew up as a poor immigrant in America during the Great Depression, won a scholarship to Harvard Law School, landed on the beaches of Normandy on D Day, were present at the liberation of concentration camps including Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Flossenburg, held leading Nazis to account at the Nuremberg trials and have fought for an International Criminal Court to hold war criminals to account the world over?
https://benferencz.org/books/parting-words-10-little-lessons-for-a-remarkable-life/
Now you know one.
Benjamin Ferencz turned 100 in 2020. In this extraordinary book, he shares his remarkable life story and the nine humble, compelling and life-affirming lessons he’s learned along the way that we can all harness for ourselves.This slender little book tells an amazing story of a truly incredible life, and it offers the gift of the lessons he learned while living it.
A man of humility, humour and wisdom, Ben Ferencz’s achievements belied his small stature and disavantaged background. His life mission was to help create a more peaceful and humane world. Despite endless disheartening news cycles, his optimism and hope never failed him.
Parting Words weaves together stories about his life, family, and work at home in the US and on the world stage, with some of the essential things he learned along the way. What I loved most is that these are not expressed in opaque, philosophical language, but as everyday easily understood phrases, and given alongside the circumstances that led him to this point of view. Some events were prosaic, everyday; others less so (like witnessing the horrors of the Nazi death camps, or helping establish the International Criminal Court.)
His nine key lessons touch on life circumstances, hopes and dreams, education, principles, life trajectories, truth, love, stamina, the future…and include:- You don’t have to follow the crowd
- Learn where you are
- Choose to be good
- The path is always bumpy, never straight
- Always speak your truth, even if no one’s listening
Buy a copy; I promise you will not regret it.
Buy several copies, because I’m pretty sure you will want to press this book into many hands while saying, Read this! In fact, my husband bought an extra copy for our young teen grandson. It makes an ideal gift for a young person embarking on this business of life, and for anyone feeling jaded by theirs, or by the world around them.Parting Words was written with Nadia Khomami and published by Sphere in 2020.
All about school: three picture books for newbies
It’s February and all across Australia, families are getting set for the first day of ‘big school’ as five year olds enter the world of formal education for the first time.
Here are three picture books to ease the transition and explore what littlies can expect.
How to Go To Big School by Sarah Ayoub and Mimi Purnell uses rhyming couplets and soft illustrations to go through all the steps of the first day: packing a lunch and putting on the school uniform, meeting the teacher, new routines and activities, games and making new friends. A great way to reinforce what most kindergarten transition programs aim to do, perfect reading for the days before the Big Day.
All About Starting School by Felicity Brooks and Mar Ferrero is a more interactive type of book, full of helpful info about every aspect of the school experience, where kids can answer prompts, draw pictures, or ask questions. It has an inclusive focus and whilst it has a UK slant, it refers to lots of different styles of schools across the world, with pictures that show a diverse range of children, grown-ups and school settings. It also has some helpful guidance at the back for adults. The many small cartoon-like illustrations invite close examination and ‘spotto’ type games.
The Wheels on the Bus and Other Songs is not strictly about starting school, though as many children will end up travelling there by bus at some stage, it’s absolutely relevant to the whole school experience. And its almost a guarantee that there will be a copy or two of this book in kindergarten classrooms and school libraries. Australian readers will be very familiar with the title song and the characters in this one: Big Ted, Jemima, Humpty, etc, all beloved members of the long-running ABC children’s TV series ‘PlaySchool.’ Along with the ‘Bus’ song, it includes other well known ones like ‘Five Little Ducks’, ‘Teddy Bear’, and ‘Little Peter Rabbit.’ This one just begs to be read (and sung) together and might be the perfect antidote to the night-before-the-big-day nerves.
These three books were all published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in November 2025.
My thanks to the publishers for review copies.The beautiful & the broken: ‘The Chateau on Sunset’ by Natasha Lester
Epic Love. Tragic Loss. Beautiful Friendship. The entrancing story of an orphan who grows up surrounded by the beautiful and the broken in the world’s most infamous hotel.
Australian author Natasha Lester writes lush, epic novels, mostly in historical settings. I’ve enjoyed several of these, especially the ones featuring stories from WWII. Her novels are always focused on women from the past who face seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but who nevertheless triumph. The Paris Photographer is a good example of this, about the photographer Lee Miller whose wartime work in Europe was famous, for a while, but who faded into self-imposed obscurity after the war ended.
The Chateau on Sunset seems, at first glance, to be a different beast altogether. The first part of the book is set firmly in the USA in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and is about a teenage girl who is sent to live with her reclusive aunt when her parents are killed in an accident.
This takes her from her home in New York to Los Angeles – or more precisely, Hollywood. Her aunt is a ‘washed up’ star of the silver screen, and her new home is the Chateau Marmont, a famous (notorious?) hotel where the rich, famous and wanna-be stars gravitate around movie moguls and film icons.
Aria is young and naive and grieving terribly for her parents. She is helped to adjust to this very new environment by two aspiring actresses, Calliope and Flitter (their ‘stage names’, I was relieved to find out). The three become firm friends, sisters of a kind, despite the age difference between Aria and the other two.
But the world of Hollywood starlets and burned-out stars is not a safe place for a youngster and Aria has to quickly learn the rules of survival. She becomes a reluctant party to a secret that haunts her and makes her potential prey to at least one of the Hollywood sharks that swim in the murky waters of the hotel.
She realises that she must leave the hotel to find her own way in the world and live life on her own terms. How she eventually does so is the crux of this story.
The author references Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, a favourite childhood book, for the inspiration for this novel. In a way, it is a re-imagining of this classic story, but one in which Jane, not Rochester, is the character with agency and control over her destiny, despite her shaky start. There is a passionate romance with accompanying doubts and troubles, but by the end of the novel Aria is steering her own ship towards a future she has chosen.
The darker elements of this book concern the behaviours of characters we might think of as ‘Harvey Weinsteins.’ The author channels her rage at the predatory behaviour of that man and others like him, and the destructive Hollywood studio system, into a gripping novel that has us cheering for those who defy the unfairness of the place and time.
You get the future you give in to, or the one you fight for.
It’s time for me to be the star of my own goddamn life.
The Chateau on Sunset ebook loc 86%Hollywood’s famous Chateau Marmont is brought to life in the characteristic style of this author, with attention to the details, large and small, that made up this iconic building and those who lived there, in the mid-twentieth century.
The Chateau on Sunset is published by Hachette Australia in March 2026.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advanced review copy.
A child, a family, a play: ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell
First published in 2020, this historical novel by award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell is generating a resurgence of interest due to the release of the film adaptation in cinemas. I plan to see it soon and wanted to read the novel first; always my preference if possible, as the original book (in my opinion) always offers a richer, deeper story than a film can tell in its more time-limited format.
I wasn’t disappointed. As you can probably tell from its title, Hamnet is an imagining of the origin story of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. And what a rich, deep story it is.
The author focuses on the members of the playwright’s family, especially his wife, called Agnes in the book, and their three children, Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet. Shakespeare himself is, if anything, more of a secondary character, in that while his emotional arc is crucial to the story, he is never named and he comes and goes physically throughout, while the narrative centres on events in his home town and within his birth family and that of his wife.
I’m sure it is no spoiler to say that the crux of the novel is the death of Hamnet, still a child, and the effect this tragedy has on all concerned. The intense grief of the boy’s family, especially his parents and twin, is expressed in different ways by each individual. A family already under pressure, tested to breaking point, despite the deep love that exists there. Will this marriage survive? How does each person cope with the unimaginable but all too common tragedy of a child’s death? These are the questions that run through the book, keeping us engaged and committed.
The author has brought to brilliant life the Tudor-era setting: the sights, smells, daily lives in a quiet town like Stratford-on-Avon and in the busy, overwhelming city of London, where Hamnet’s father goes to pursue his quest for a career in the burgeoning world of Elizabethan theatre. Descriptions are deep, detailed, almost forensic: the journey of a single flea from a far off port, across land and oceans to the home where it bites Judith, resulting in her almost-death from bubonic plague and Hamnet’s subsequent illness, is startling in its specificity.
Within this vivid context the novel’s heart beats: love of a parent for their child, love of a twin for their paired sibling, love of a writer for their craft, love of a couple for their other.
And so a famous play was born: its story of overwhelming, maddening grief, echoing across the centuries to readers and theatre-goers today.
He can manage these: histories and comedies. He can carry on. Only with them can he forget who he is and what has happened. They are safe places to stow his mind (and no one else on stage with him, not one of the other players, his closest friends, will know that he finds himself looking out, every evening, over the watching crowd, in search of a particular face, a boy with a slightly crooked smile and a perpetually surprised expression; he scans the audience minutely, carefully, because he still cannot fathom that his son could have just gone; he must be somewhere; all he has to do is find him).
Hamnet ebook loc 254 of 310Hamnet was published by Tinder Press in 2020. I read the ebook version on Kindle.
The film adaptation is in cinemas as I write.For the adventurous ones: ‘The Cherayroos: Underground Rules’ by S.P.Doran
The Cherayroos: Underground Rules is all about an adventurous explorer from a little community beneath our feet.
Chie lives in CherayrooVille, beneath the WhisperDeep forest. The village is enclosed in the ancient winding roots of the Tree of Solace, where little fluffy creatures with twiggy legs and arms and big, saucer eyes (and very strange noses) dwell happily.
They obey the Rootscript of Rules which define how they are to live, study, and work. The most important one is that they are never to leave the village – which is okay for most, but not for Chie, as he is keen to explore the Above and prove his bravery.
What follows is a series of adventures as Chie sets off to find the way out of CherayrooVille and see what lies Above. He meets other creatures, some helpful, some grumpy and some plain scary, but in the end he realises that, while adventures are exciting, the rules are there to protect him and others, and really, all he had to do was ask to make his dream come true.
This is a lovely book for very early readers or to be read aloud. The text is nice and big, on pages that resemble parchment or an old manuscript, complimenting the detailed, richly coloured illustrations. The chapters are short and the narrative moves along at a brisk pace to keep youngsters involved.
Perhaps in homage to Tolkein, there is a terrific map (reminiscent of The Hobbit) and snippets of Cherayroo words and phrases used, with a glossary at the back. I confess I found these a bit confusing due to them all starting with ‘ch’ – but that’s probably just me. At the back the author has included some interesting questions for children to consider about the story and its world.
The book is all about exploring, being curious and adventurous, and encouraging youngsters to observe and ask questions about the world around them. I admire writers who work to get their ideas out there and I hope this one continues with this world and the characters he has created, in future books.
I could also see a fabulous animated adaption of this story appealing to young fans!The Cherayroos: Underground Rules is available in ebook and print versions on Amazon, and via the author’s website.
My thanks to the author for a review copy.Library treasures: ‘A Waltz for Matilda’ by Jackie French
I’ve had this one on my shelf for several years now, picked up at a street library, and finally had a chance to read it. So glad I did! First published in 2010, it is an imaginative re-telling of the origin story of arguably Australia’s most famous (and certainly beloved) folk song, Waltzing Matilda.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolabah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
‘You’ll come a’waltzing Matilda with me.’In this story, Matilda is a girl living with her very sick mother in an inner-city slum, working long hours in a jam factory to try to make ends meet. When her mother dies, she is left alone to fend for herself in an unkind world.
She goes in search of her long-lost father, a man her mother described as a ‘golden man’, though the couple had separated years earlier. The quest takes her to a drought-stricken isolated sheep farm on the outskirts of a small town, neighbouring a large run established by a squatter, Mr Drinkwater.
Her father welcomes her into his life but because of the drought, is about to leave his farm and go ‘on the track’ as a swagman, searching for work as he travels. He agrees that Matilda can accompany him, because where else is she to go?
Their journey together is cut short, though. Mr Drinkwater traps her father as they camped by a billabong, with troopers arriving to arrest him on a trumped-up charge of sheep stealing. He drowns (no spoiler here, the song says it all) and Matilda is once again on her own.
She decides to go back to her father’s farm and try to make a go of it, with the help of several others who come to help in honour of her father’s memory. He was a man much admired by the shearers and other workers in the district, because of his activism around shearer’s rights and the movement towards a national federated nation, able to pass laws to protect the rights of the more vulnerable in the community.
As always with a Jackie French novel, the story weaves in several important historical events and themes: the crippling1890s drought and subsequent economic depression; movements for better working conditions, women’s suffrage and temperance; conflict between wealthy squatters and the indigenous people of the land they stole.
It also deals unblinkingly with the racism of the time, the way that the move towards a united nation of Australia was motivated by ideals but also by self -interest and racist attitides, especially towards Aboriginal people and the Chinese. I love how this author does not shy away from the more difficult parts of our nation’s history.
A Waltz for Matilda is a big story, and book one of the ‘Matilda’ series. It’s very readable, with moments of both humour and sadness, and characters you can care about. Matilda is an admirable figure and it is a delight to watch her growth from orphaned girl to capable young woman. Best of all, it’s a wonderful way to introduce some important history to young Australian readers. Perfect for middle grade to young adult readers, this (no longer young) reader recommends it highly!
A Waltz for Matilda was published by Angus & Robertson in 2010.
Whale sharks and autism: ‘Western Steps’ by Brian Sherlock
What brings whale sharks, itchy backpacker hostel sheets, and autism together?
Western Steps, a short ebook by an indie writer from Melbourne.
In a few short chapters of vivid, lively writing, Brian Sherlock shares his first-ever solo travel experience to Western Australia: the grimy backpacker hostel in Broome where he began his adventure; the fifteen-hour-long ‘murder run’ bus ride south to the famous Mingaloo Reef; his sharp anxiety at entering the water from a boat into the endless-looking Indian Ocean; swimming near whale sharks, the largest fish in that ocean; the kindness he receives from others; strange encounters in yet another hostel…all of which he experiences while also having the (then undiagnosed) condition of autism spectrum disorder.
This journey in 2010 was a bucket list one for the author and which, because of his anxiety attacks, required quite a bit of courage and determination, along with a dollop of humour. I’m happy that he reports in his author’s note that it was certainly not his last trip. He has since travelled widely in Australia and overseas and enjoys writing about his experiences.
The tone of his story is chatty, very personal, and definitely amusing at times. It offers an insight into the experience of travel, from someone living with what might today be described as an ‘invisible disability’. Sherlock states that he hopes his story encourages other ‘neurospicy’ folk who harbour a longing to travel, to get out there and explore the world.
While there are aspects of writing craft that need development, this is a good start to what could well become a series of short travel stories drawn from his own experience.
Western Steps was published by the author in 2025 and is available on Amazon or from the author’s website.
Thank you to the author for a copy to review.Chilling ‘What if?’: ‘Inheritance’ by Genevieve Gannon
If you could reduce or eliminate the chance that your unborn child might suffer or die from a genetic illness or rampant variants of a virus that has already swept through the world, would you do it? What if you could ensure that your future son or daughter was born with gifts such as enhanced lung capacity, stronger bones, or a beautiful singing voice?
These are questions at the heart of Australian author Genevieve Gannon’s novel Inheritance. It’s strapline: The perfect child is now possible, makes pretty clear the kind of future world its characters inhabit.
Though, it’s not that far into the future. The novel opens in 2027, which at the time of its publication was just three short years away.
Emily and her husband Dougal are deciding whether to use a new gene editing service alongside more traditional IVF to help conceive a child. Now legal, the service offers to help the couple avoid some of the health-related pitfalls in their own families. But how far should they go in designing a baby?
There is a second, interwoven narrative set decades later, in a world where gene modification is no longer regarded as benign or desirable.
Adelaide is a political staffer in the office of a Parliamentarian whom she admires and respects, someone who is against the discriminatory rules that have been introduced in recent years, that put ‘modified’ people into a second-class of citizens.
But Adelaide has a secret that she is determined not to expose, one that involves a plan she and her husband have put into action, but that results in the clock ticking…will the result be disaster or joy for the couple?
Inheritance reads a bit like a thriller, with a tight timeline, conflicting political and social divisions, and adventures that require all the courage that Emily and Adelaide can muster.
As I read this story, though, I was mindful of how applicable its themes are today: particularly technology that develops faster than any social and administrative systems and laws that should guide it. A glaring example the world faces right now is, of course, AI. How do humans manage this powerful tool to best serve everyone, not just the few who seek to gain money or power from its use?
It’s also a reflection on the demands and complications of modern life and relationships; if we forgive those who make mistakes and under what circumstances; if we forgive ourselves for our own mistakes.
Inheritance is a gripping read that, despite its near-future setting, grapples with perplexing and troubling issues that seem all-too-real in today’s world.
It was published in 2024 by Pantera Press.
Literary + Crime: The Name of the Sister’ by Gail Jones
This very Australian novel is best described as ‘literary crime’. Crime, in that there is a crime that is central to the story line: why things in the novel play out the way they do. Literary, in the sense of its beautiful prose and the strong focus on character and theme.
The plot concerns Angie, a disillusioned journalist who is trying to make a career from freelance work. Her husband Sam is a teacher, also somewhat jaded in his chosen career. The third main character is Angie’s childhood friend Beverley, now a senior detective in the NSW Police. The three individuals and their interactions form the core of the story, around their own concerns and preoccupations and the novel’s crime.
So, to the crime. A young woman is found on a deserted road one night, near the mining town of Broken Hill in outback NSW. She can’t speak, has no ID and no one knows who she is. She becomes Unknown Woman, then given the moniker Jane.
As you might expect, the media and online social platforms are full of rumours, speculation and theories about who ‘Jane’ really is and what happened to her.
Angie is herself drawn to the story and thanks to her connection with Bev, ends up fielding calls from among the many people who contact the Police information line, certain that ‘Jane’ is their missing daughter, friend, or sister. Despite her misgivings, Angie becomes a sounding board, a witness to the loss and grief that these people have carried for months or years. It starts to become a heavy burden but she feels unable to stop.
She bears her own burdens, including her inability to have a child, and the grief of her slow realisation that her marriage was failing, her previously uncomplicated relationship with Sam becoming distant and unsatisfying. She knows that Marriages of a decade were destroyed by less: this gloom of worn expectations, this failure wholly to connect. (p21) Worse still, she doesn’t know what to do about it.
Then a family arrive from Germany to identify the Unknown Woman as their daughter who’d gone missing a couple of years earlier on a holiday in Australia. ‘Jane’ is Hannah Bloch; the mystery of her identity solved but not what had happened to her.
As Bev goes to Broken Hill to work on the case, Angie decides to join her there in the hope of…what? Distraction from her own problems? That she might have something to contribute to the police investigation? She’s not really sure.
It’s in Broken Hill that the novel’s climax takes place, a resolution of the mystery at the heart of the novel, and a revelation of the (very clever) meaning of the title.
Jones’s writing is beautiful, deftly capturing the various landscapes of inner-suburban Sydney and outback Broken Hill, along with relationships in all their wonderful supportiveness and messiness:
When Bev and Angie next met it was at Bev’s apartment, for a pizza.
Girls’ night, Bev called it; both needed to talk. They were alike in wanting the other to confirm what Angie called constitutional seriousness, how they had seen in each other – perhaps from the beginning, and certainly before they had words for it – the ability to not look away, to search for deeper meanings, to take themselves seriously.
The Name of the Sister p50-51The Name of the Sister was published in 2025 by Text Publishing.
