May 14, 2025 • 58 mins
The beloved author of The Secret River discusses Unsettled, a deeply personal memoir of reckoning with what it means to be on land that was taken from other people. In conversation with Rosemarie Milsom.
Listen to award-winning author Kate Grenville as she discusses Unsettled, a deeply personal memoir of family legacies, truth-telling and reckoning with what it means to be on land that was taken from other people.
Intertwining her family’s history with the broader story of First Nations peoples’ dispossession and displacement, Grenville considers what it means to be descended from people who were ‘on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation’.
She speaks about historical facts and historical fictions, writing challenging histories and confronting the ghosts of the past, in conversation with Rosemarie Milsom.
In partnership with Vision Australia Library.
Vision Australia Radio is a proud media partner to Melbourne Writers Festival. Visit www.varadio.org to learn more about our national news and information radio service.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:15):
On Vision Australia Radio. Welcome to this special broadcast thanks
to Vision Australia Library in partnership with the Melbourne Writers
Festival 2025 at the Vision Australia Library on Friday the
9th of May, Melbourne Writers Festival held a conversation with
award winning author Kate Grenville, the beloved author of The
Secret River Kate discusses unsettled, a deeply personal memoir of
(00:36):
reckoning with what it means to be on land that
was taken from other people. Vision Australia Radio is a
proud media partner to Melbourne Writers Festival, and we hope
you enjoyed this special broadcast of Kate Grenville Unsettled, presented
by Vision Australia Library.
S2 (00:55):
Welcome everyone to the Vision Australia Library. We're delighted to
have you with us this evening in conversation with Kate
Grenville for the Melbourne Writers Festival. As we begin this evening,
we take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of
the land on which we gather today here at Kooyong.
It's the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. We pay
(01:19):
our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, recognising
their rich history over tens of thousands of years as
the original storytellers of this land. Oral storytelling is so
important to our Vision Australia library community, and as a
library service, we're committed to telling the First Nations stories
(01:41):
and continuing to support the traditions of oral storytelling. So
my name is Justine Heath and I'm the acting CEO
of Vision Australia. Vision Australia is Australia's leading service provider
for people living with blindness and low vision. Our library
service is hosting tonight's event, Vision Australia Library is a
(02:05):
national public library for Australians living with a print disability.
We open up a world of books and learning in
accessible audio, in braille, in digital formats, and support a
wonderful community of readers and writers across the country. So
it's fantastic to welcome some of our members and many
(02:25):
of our volunteers here with us tonight, as well as
many joining us online. So it's a tradition when we
gather at Vision Australia to do a roll call and
a description of the space in which we're meeting. Now,
with so many people here tonight, we're not going to
be able to do a roll call. But I will
describe the the room that we're in. This is the
(02:46):
large conference room, and we have a stage at the
front with our guests sitting on stage on sofas. I'm
standing at the front and you all came in at
a door to to your left. So now we get
to the important part of this evening and that's to
introduce Kate Grenville. So I'm really thrilled to welcome you Kate.
(03:08):
Kate is one of Australia's most celebrated writers, having published
18 books, including international bestseller The Secret River. One of
our library staff has a book given to her by
her mother 21 years ago in Alice Springs and signed
by Kate Grenville, which has tonight been signed again and
(03:29):
dated with this year. So it's a wonderful achievement, Kate,
and we're so thrilled that you're here tonight. So, as
previously mentioned, Kate's latest book, Unsettled A Journey Through Time
and Place, is described as a deeply personal memoir, reckoning
with what it means to be on land that's taken
(03:51):
from other people. Kate intertwines her family history with a
broader story of First Nations peoples dispossession, and Kate speaks
about historical facts and historical fictions, and writing challenging histories
and confronting the ghosts of the past. We're also very
lucky to have with us tonight, Rosemarie Milsome and Kate
(04:11):
will be in conversation with Rosemarie, and Rosemarie is an
award winning journalist and the founding director of the Newcastle
Writers Festival. Her work has been published in the Sydney
Morning Herald and Vogue Australia, and she's worked as a
member of the ABC broadcast team since 2016. So welcome, Kate,
and welcome, Rosemary. Thank you.
S3 (04:34):
Thank you. This is a real pleasure to be here.
I had the privilege of speaking to Kate a couple
of weeks ago about her book, and it's really great
to have an opportunity, because I've been thinking about it
a lot since then and different issues have come up
for me. So I think we'll take this conversation possibly
in different paths. I think I would like Kate to
(04:54):
Kate to start with a reading because it always helps,
I think, to hear the voice of the writer. Um,
you know, when we're speaking, you might not necessarily glean
that if you haven't read the book. And, um, this
is a really accessible book. I feel like, um, Kate
is all of us. Katie's. Katie's sort of representing our own, um, shortcomings,
(05:18):
our own questions around our place in this country. Um,
it's not didactic. She doesn't lecture us. It's so accessible.
And I think that you'll get a sense of that
if you. If you hear her, read a short passage.
S4 (05:32):
Thanks very much, Rosemarie. And lovely to be here. Thanks.
Thanks for coming. And, uh, it's fantastic to be involved,
even in this small way, with the work that Vision
Australia does. So this is the this is the start
of the book. I was 10 or 11 when one
day in 1960 or 1961, my class walked down from
(05:53):
North Sydney Demonstration School to Ball's Head, overlooking Sydney Harbour.
I remember as Grizzling about having to walk so far.
It was hot, the sun blasting down as we trailed along.
But when we got there, we saw something that's been
burned into my memory ever since. We're standing on the
high point at the end of Ball's Head, the harbour.
(06:16):
Glittering bluely. We've left the boring suburban streets behind. Out
here it's all sun and sky and trees bending in
the breeze. We're lined up listening to the teacher. Because
we're going to have to answer the questions on our
excursion sheet. And we're going to have to draw the
thing we've come to see, which is on the ground
(06:39):
behind a bright white painted council fence. The same bright
white paint has picked out a big shape engraved on
the rock. It's nothing more than a simple outline, a whale,
or maybe a fish. Shh. We're not that impressed except
by how big it is. It had been done, Mrs.
(07:00):
Linney said, by Aboriginal people, not the white paint. Mrs.
Linney made that clear. They'd just done the groove in
the rock to make the picture. We'd put the paint
there so you could see it better. I'd like to
be able to say that looking at that whale on
the rock was the first moment that Aboriginal people became
real to me. I'd like to say it was the
(07:23):
start of a lifetime's uncomfortable knowledge. I could pretend I
felt sad or puzzled or curious or sorry, but the
truth is, I don't remember what I felt. It seems
as if I could reconstruct the place, molecule by molecule.
So I must have felt something. But I'd be lying
if I said I knew what. Still, that piercingly vivid
(07:46):
visual memory lodged in me like a splinter. The excursion
was part of a social studies segment about the Aborigines.
In class we'd made paper boomerangs and drawn pictures of
bark shelters. The Aboriginal people were exotic and picturesque, but
they were long ago and they were gone. That's what
(08:07):
this engraving was telling us. They were here, but now
they've gone. When I was a child, the gone part
wasn't talked about much. Measles was mentioned a lot and
so was the flu. Mostly, though, there was a sense
of something inevitable, something taking its natural course, like the
(08:27):
turning of the seasons. These days we know a lot
more about how that going happened. Measles and the flu
did play their part, but above all, it was men
who wanted somebody else's land and had the weapons and
the hardness of heart to use them. For the First
Nations going took the form of being hounded, harassed, starved,
(08:50):
separated from kin, forced over cliffs, drowned, poisoned and shot.
It meant fighting a war for their homeland over a
century and a half, and resisting their dispossession right up
to the present. Until recently, the terrible story of that
long war was smothered into silence. But these days, the
(09:12):
facts about what happened are well researched, well known and
beyond dispute. For us non-Indigenous Australians, the question now isn't
what happened. It's what do we do now that we know?
And essentially, that's where that story began with that question
in my mind.
S3 (09:33):
You often talk about when you start a book, there's
a question at the core of it, and you've just
outlined the question at the centre of this book. I
think a lot of us in the audience can relate
to that sense of growing up and having an education
in Australia and having huge gaps in that understanding of
our First Nations people. Do you think that lack of knowledge, um,
(09:58):
not knowing quite what went on when we were growing up,
you know, is that part of our fear of tackling
our role in colonisation?
S4 (10:09):
Yes. In fact, I think it might even be a
bit more than that because we didn't grow up with
a sense of a gap. It was well filled. I'm
sure some of you would remember the plastic shape of
Australia that you had to like, a stencil that we
drew around and then drew endless dotted lines representing all
those hopeless explorers. I can tell you a great deal
(10:31):
about all those hopeless explorers, but about the Aboriginal people,
there was just, um, a gap. It's as I said,
it's it's as if they. Yes, they were here, but
now they're kind of irrelevant. So what it's required in
more recent times is not perhaps not unlearning something, but
realizing the extent of our ignorance. And that's quite confronting.
(10:54):
You know, we went to all those social studies classes.
We thought we knew a bit about our history. Turns
out we didn't. Or we knew a tiny, misleading fraction
of it.
S3 (11:07):
You go on a journey, you take this personal journey and,
you know, in a sense you're saying you said you
do say it requires an open heart and an open mind.
Is it that simple?
S4 (11:20):
Well, having an open heart and an open mind is
never simple, I don't think. I mean, we're kind of
hard wired to leap to a story and then stick
to it, I think. And so those of us who
were told all that stuff in our childhood are finding
it very difficult to rethink it. And of course, once
(11:41):
you start to know what actually happened on the frontier,
the unremitting, relentless violence and deliberate cruelty. In many cases,
that is terribly confronting stuff to know that, you know,
our lot. Basically the colonists were part of it. And
as with any other kind of thing that's confronting, it's
(12:02):
a whole lot easier to just kind of close the
heart and even close the mind if you can. It
is actually possible, isn't it, to have an open mind
but a closed heart? And I think maybe that's where
a lot of us in Australia are at the moment.
We do know the facts. We've read books like, um,
David Marr's Killing for country, so we kind of know
(12:25):
what happened. But the next step is actually the more
difficult one to kind of, um, get that very horrible
stuff out of the dark cupboard and bring it out
and make it part of our own lives. And so
that's that's why I wrote the book, really, to try
and see if I was brave enough, really, to go
(12:47):
into the dark place and really look at that history
through the lens of my own family, because my family
goes back 4 or 5 generations in this country, and
in each generation they were actually on the frontier. Each
generation kept moving out, looking for more land for their
sheep and cattle and also for every generation. My mother
(13:09):
made sure that I have a little snippet of family Story.
So that gave me a kind of doorway into that
very difficult. It was a kind of familiarity. It started
with family, something very close to me, something I knew,
and the places where those stories happened. You know, they
were places in many cases. I had been to them before,
(13:32):
but this was the chance to go into them in
a different way and sort of bolstered, perhaps, by that
familiarity to confront the unconfronted. Unconfortable.
S3 (13:45):
This isn't the first time you've written about your family.
We are all very aware of your incredible books. You
know The Secret River, particularly where you use it. You
use your own family's story and history as a springboard
into fiction. Was that an emotional decision at the time?
(14:05):
Were you not ready? Could you have even tackled non-fiction
at that point in relation to your family? And I
think the phrase you use, which I think is so powerful, um,
you know, your family's history in Australia, on the sharp
edge of the moving blade that was colonisation. Could you
have taken the journey you've just taken back when you
(14:27):
were grappling with it, you were grappling with it creatively.
So it was on your mind. What what was the
decision to move into fiction and fictionalize? Who was your
Solomon Wiseman? Is is Kate's actual relative fictionalizes. We often
all of us who've read The Secret River have even
watched the series. Um, fictionalizes William Thornhill.
S4 (14:50):
Yeah, it's a really good question, actually. The secret River
began as nonfiction, which is interesting. I thought I was
going to write a kind of biography of my great
great great grandfather, who was a convict who came out
here in 1806. Solomon Wiseman I knew a fair bit
about him, and he was a bit of a kind
of he was known as the rogue of the road.
(15:11):
So he was a bit of a celebrity of his time.
So there was a lovely, rich, uh, bed of documents
that I knew I could draw on. So I thought
it wouldn't it be interesting to write a biography of
this man and to show how it was moment to moment,
when he went up the Hawkesbury River just outside of
Sydney and grabbed 100 acres for himself. I thought I
(15:35):
could just tease that apart. So, um, it turned into
a novel because I actually couldn't find anything about how
he dealt with the Aboriginal people that he displaced. And
I have to say, I remember the moment when I
realised that I would have to write if I was
going to write it at all. It would have to
be a novel to fill in some of the gaps
that the documentation wasn't giving me. And, you know, that's
(15:59):
hard historical fiction, which I hadn't really written before, only
in a frivolous way. You know, you've got to work
out the logistics. Like, you know, what did they brush
their teeth with, if anything? Um, how did they hold
their pants up without elastic? All that kind of thing?
My heart sank at the idea of actually having to
sort that out. But I did, because I by then
(16:21):
I had I had gone so deeply into the family
story and realising that it was a microcosm of the
national story. And I was, you know, I could see
how important it was to tell the story. Um, and
there was always that little bit of distance. William Thornhill
(16:42):
in the novel is not my great great grandfather, partly
because I don't know whether my great great grandfather took
part in violence against Aboriginal people, and I probably never will.
There's no documents about it. So, you know, the story
had to be told. And in telling it in fiction,
there was a way of holding it at a distance.
(17:03):
When you write a novel, you're thinking about the shape
of the story. You want it to be beautiful and satisfying.
You're thinking about every sentence. You want it to be
beautiful and energetic, energetic and all those sorts of things.
So there's a whole a whole lot of layers of
distance between me and the subject. So that was in 2000.
I started to write that book. So it's taken me
(17:25):
25 years to come all the way back to Solomon Wiseman.
But now something about the referendum made me brave enough
or angry enough to think, okay, I have had the
screen of fiction between me and all this, not just
the secret River, but Sarah Thornhill, the lieutenant, even a
(17:47):
roommate of leaves. They all have that screen of fiction
based on fact. This time I'm just going to be
me in the landscape. Um. Ignorant but open. And that was. Yeah,
it was. It was a difficult thing to do. And
at the time, I didn't think it would be a
(18:09):
book because I thought, no one will read this. Even
if it turns into a some kind of a narrative. Um,
and in any case, I will be attacked from all
sides if I write this. Uh, so I just set
off writing it for myself. Really? And, um, here it
is as a published book, which kind of still surprises
(18:31):
me in some ways.
S3 (18:32):
Why would you have been attacked by both sides? What?
What do you think would have triggered that?
S4 (18:38):
Well, you may be aware that the secret River I
was attacked mostly by white historians who were very cranky.
That a novelist, actually. What they were really cranky about.
Don't tell them I said this. What they were really
cranky about was that novelists sell more copies than historians.
And I don't blame them for being cranky. After all,
(19:00):
Dan Brown sells far more copies than literary novelists like me.
So there's a kind of, you know, chain of great
chain of being of envy, really. Um, and at the time,
Aboriginal people were incredibly Aboriginal people came up to me
in the street, recognising me to shake my hand and
thank me for writing the book. Um, but the world
(19:23):
has changed. And with this one, I'm very aware that
it's me putting a white person at the centre of
the story again. So, you know, it would be quite
legitimate for an Aboriginal person to say, well, get out
of the way. You know, it's our turn to start
telling the stories. I did that, um, because I think
(19:44):
we white people, actually, it's time for us to not
keep telling stories about Aboriginal people in our history, but
actually hold the mirror up and look at ourselves and
do a bit of soul searching. Um, look, the attacks
haven't happened yet and perhaps they won't. Um, I was
not prepared for it with The Secret River and it happened.
(20:04):
I am prepared for it this time. And perhaps, God willing,
it won't happen.
S3 (20:08):
I don't think it's going to. Because the tone you're taking,
you're not telling an Aboriginal story. You're not trying to
put yourself in the centre of their world or, you know,
co-opt their history or their their relationship with this country.
You are, as you said, placing yourself ignorant but open.
(20:31):
And I can't see how anyone you know. Well, I
can actually. I mean, look what's happening in America. But
I think that there's there's respect for that approach. Um,
can you set a scene, particularly for those not familiar
with Wisemans Ferry, which is where your great great great grandfather,
great great grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, took up land north of Sydney?
(20:55):
Can you describe it and also how you felt revisiting it?
You had been there before, but revisiting it in connection
with this book, because that's essentially where the story starts.
The journey starts.
S4 (21:07):
That's right. It's the family story gave me a very
simple structure for the book, which is to simply follow
out from Sydney or to all the places where the
family went. So Wisemans ferry is about 50 miles north
of Sydney on the Hawkesbury River, and the family story
is always that Solomon Wiseman came out here as a
convict was freed quite quickly, as many of them were.
(21:30):
And then the family story says he then went up
the Hawkesbury River and took up land. Now, even back
in 2000, when I was writing The Secret River, I
was well aware that the phrase took up was deceitful.
Let's let's not mince words. What he simply did was
(21:50):
take the land, but how different it is. And it
made me start thinking about the not only the story
itself of the past, the facts, but the way we
tell the story shapes the reality of it in our minds. So,
you know, take up is a wonderfully innocent thing. You know,
you take up a bit of knitting that you haven't
finished or.
S3 (22:11):
Gardening.
S4 (22:11):
Gardening. You take up gardening. That's right. It's got this
lovely benign feeling. In fact, it's got a sense that
you're actually kind of correcting something. You're finishing something that
needs to be finished. It's a good thing to do.
Whereas if you go up the Hawkesbury and you take land,
there is no getting away from the fact that you
have actually stolen it. So I had been there many times.
I'd been there first with mum when I was about ten,
(22:34):
and she showed me the room where Solomon Wiseman is
supposed to have killed his first wife by pushing her
down the stairs. And there's one of the rooms which
I've stayed in, which he's supposed to haunt all that,
all that kind of nonsense. Anyway, I had been there
many times, and I knew at one level quite a
lot about it. Once I'd done the research and I
(22:56):
knew about the Darug, the local people, and I had
heard about these things called yam daisies, which had been
growing on the banks of the Hawkesbury. But it wasn't
until I went back and I knew how important the
yam daisies were. They were a staple diet for the
Darug and for many other people throughout Australia. Here in
(23:17):
Victoria they were called Murnong and they were an absolutely
staple diet. They grew everywhere. The thing about them is,
as a Darug man explained to me, you can eat
most of them and then keep a bit to plant,
just like an Irishman with a potato, he said. And
to me, that was like a revelation about what had
happened between black and white. Solomon Wiseman wanted to plant
(23:40):
his not potatoes, probably, but corn or wheat, and he
would have. But the thing is. And so he dug
up the yam daisies on the rich river flats where
they grew. But the thing is, he would have called
them yam daisies, which means that he would have known
that they were part of the Aboriginal diet. And yet
(24:01):
he dug them up and replaced them with his own food.
No wonder there was trouble, you know. No wonder there
was sort of existential trouble. So when I went back
there just recently for this, for this, the place was
almost too familiar, and I've never much liked it. It's
the river runs at the base of enormous, dramatic sandstone cliffs,
(24:22):
so it's quite claustrophobic. And it's always kind of hot,
and the sun never seems to shine properly there. To
my mind, it's actually a very haunted landscape. But I
went down to a place where I had gone all
those many years ago when I was researching the secret
River to try to find, um, 20 years ago, I
(24:43):
had gone. And, you know, I've always wanted to be
an archaeologist. And I thought, I wonder if there are
any remnants of the original ferry down on the bank
where I knew it had been. So I remember being
there one very hot morning, scratching away at the dirt,
finding various things which I allowed myself to pretend were
parts of Solomon Wiseman's original ferry. But this time I
(25:05):
looked at myself doing that with some kind of horror
because I thought, yeah, okay, Solomon Wiseman was here and
he had the ferry and all that. But actually, what's
really significant is that this is where the Murnong would
have grown. They called Medini up on the Hawkesbury. This
right where I'm standing is where they would have grown.
How come I didn't realize that 20 years ago. So
(25:28):
this book is very much about me thinking. I have
always kind of known these things, but I've never known
them in my heart. And now I am. And that's
quite a quite a confronting feeling.
S3 (25:41):
It's not a straightforward journey. It's not a kind of, um,
you know, family greatest hits, you know, let's let's go
visit these, um, you know, you, you struggle with because
you travel. And I was interested because I'm from the
Hunter Hunter region. How much of your family history takes
in the Hunter region? Up into the Hunter Valley, upper Hunter,
(26:02):
and then into north north, north western New South Wales?
Your family really did follow development. Follow settlement. But it's
not a pleasant journey, is it? It's not a it's
you have moments of being very uncomfortable and and I
get the sense that you possibly considered, you know, like,
(26:23):
get me out of here. Why? What have I done this.
S4 (26:26):
Yes. That's right. And in fact, it was in the
Hunter Valley. The Hunter Valley used to be a most beautiful,
idyllic place in my childhood. It was where you went
for a weekend away, and it was absolutely beautiful. You know,
pampered horses behind white fences and beautiful little boutique vineyards.
That's what it was. But it is unfortunately underlain by
(26:48):
an enormous amount of coal. So the Hunter Valley, when
you go there now, has been just pulverized into this.
I mean, the scale of it, I suppose I'm innocent,
but it is frightening. Um, so it was there where
one of my great great grandfather, uh, took up land, uh,
(27:09):
in the Hunter Valley. So I went and had a
look at the place and, you know, stood on the
ground here. Here's where it happened. All that kind of
trying to whip myself into a a kind of feeling
about it, a recognition of some kind. But because the
landscape was so devastated, part of the land that he
had has now in fact been dug up, turned inside
(27:30):
out into this weird kind of purple rock. It is
so ugly. It's like Mars. It was extremely depressing, and
it made me wonder what I was doing in a
big way. I mean, I thought on the one hand,
this is a very useful metaphor. The damage that we
have done here to the land is a kind of
(27:51):
metaphor for the damage that we did to the people
and the world that was here before. And perhaps that's
why it was in that place that I thought, this
is hopeless. I thought I was going to do some
kind of pilgrimage. I used that rather, you know, pompous
kind of word. But actually, what am I really doing?
The landscape. I can never go back to that. This
(28:13):
is not the landscape that Aboriginal people lived on. It's
been two to destroyed for that. So I decided to
just give up and go home. And I remember I
left the place where my great great grandfather had been,
and there was a there was a crossroads, a classic,
you know, the classic metaphor left was home. If I
(28:34):
turned right, I would keep on going. And I stopped
there and I was just dithering. I was a classic
old lady, dithering, putting the indicator left, putting the indicator
right other way round.
S3 (28:46):
That's dangerous. Up in the hunter with all the men
and their big beast of vehicles.
S4 (28:50):
Absolutely. It's full of men in utes, and they're those
high performance utes. And boy, do they go fast. I
had been monstered all the way up there by these things,
tailgating me. Anyway, as I sat there dithering, one of
them pulled up behind me and I just knew without
looking that a big hand was poised to give me
a great blast on the horn. So kind of out
(29:12):
of fright, really. Perhaps I just happen to have the
indicator on the right hand side. I turn right and
I went on and like a lot of things, when
you've given up on the other side of giving up.
Giving up something else opens. Something else presents itself. And
my mood changed, I became less. Kind of confident about
(29:33):
what I was doing. Uh, I felt much less confident
after that, but that lack of confidence seemed appropriate for
what I was doing.
S3 (29:43):
You just mentioned mood, and when we were hovering near
Kate's books there on the table, just before we started
our conversation, I said, you know, what do you think
when you see all the books? You know, it's incredible,
all this work. And she said, you know, I can
sense the mood of of each of them. And I
thought that was really interesting observation. And I wonder, what's
(30:04):
the mood of this book if you had to describe it?
S4 (30:08):
Ah, yeah. The mood of this book is like none
of the others, because I wrote it at very high speed,
which I don't usually do. And although I did do
a lot of drafts with the help of my fabulous editor. Um,
it wasn't like the novels. I wasn't. I wasn't kind
of dwelling on every jewel like sentence. This. I was
doing something different in this book. So the mood was
(30:29):
kind of there was something determined and obstinate and kind
of beating my head against a difficulty about it. It
was that kind of mood. And there was also an
element of kind of rage. Uh, you know, the referendum
was not long over, uh, and I was very disappointed,
as many people were, um, I had a kind of, um,
(30:53):
and there was also a kind of once I realized
that it could be a book, I also had a
kind of almost an evangelical feeling of wanting to share
the fact that you can do this journey and survive.
You can go into those dark places and you can
come out. It hasn't destroyed you, and you can actually
look at things now. Um, it's not something to be
(31:14):
frightened of.
S3 (31:16):
I wonder, too, if we often feel a sense of guilt.
You know this. And you do hear some people say, well,
you know, it's my relatives. Why should I feel guilt?
I didn't do anything. Um, guilt is a word that
comes up a lot when we're looking at, um, reconciling
our our kind of place in this country's our place,
(31:40):
which is a very short part of this country's history.
But I think what comes through in this book, and
I think and it's a more valuable, um, emotion or
is sorrow, I think, and maybe that's harder to reconcile
with a sense of sorrow about what's happened and our
(32:02):
part in it.
S4 (32:03):
Yeah. Look, that's a very perceptive thing, that it's actually
harder because the thing about guilt, um, I thought a
lot about this in writing the book. Am I feeling guilty? Um.
and a lot of people say, as you say, you know,
intergenerational guilt, there's no such thing, etc.. So I decided
that guilt. The thing about guilt is that it suggests
(32:26):
its opposite. It's one of those words where you think
of the word and you immediately also get it balanced.
So guilt and innocence, they go together. When you think
of the word guilt, you also think about innocence. And
in between those things are a whole lot of, um,
mechanisms that, you know, most societies have invented compensation or
punishment or, um, you know, atonement. So there's a whole
(32:50):
little process that can take you from guilt to innocence.
This is quite apart from the fact that, you know,
you didn't personally do it.
S3 (32:59):
And language is a very clever way of doing that.
S4 (33:01):
Yes, that's that's exactly right. So I think guilt is
not appropriate for what happened in the past. I think
we can feel guilty for what we're failing to do
in the present, but that's that's a different kind of guilt.
But I think that you're quite right. Sorrow was the overwhelming.
I burst into tears several times on this journey, just
(33:26):
not that I had thought of any particularly specifically tragic thing,
but to be in the beautiful parts of the landscape
and realize recognize what had been here and what is
irretrievably lost is is terrible sorrow. And of course, the
other feeling is shame. Shame is not like guilt, because
(33:47):
there is no way that shame can be rubbed out.
You can only accept shame. I think if you've done
something bad and you feel ashamed of it, you have
to just keep waking up at three in the morning
and regretting it. There's no real escape.
S3 (34:05):
Do you think there is an increasing awareness among Australians,
and particularly I'm interested in the growth of, I mean,
everyone getting their DNA tested and where do I come
from and tracing it back and, um, I mean, I
have a theory that because it's happened to my own mother,
that once you hit a certain age, suddenly you just
become obsessed with the family tree. Hasn't hit me yet,
but I'm sure it's on the horizon. It's definitely consuming
(34:28):
her at the moment, and I should tune in a
little bit more. Um, you know, I should focus a
little bit more when she's talking to me about it,
because it kind of goes over my head. These names
and people don't mean a lot to me. You know,
they're so long ago. But do you think, um, Australians
are with with this sort of search and more interest
in ancestry and where we come from, more open to
(34:48):
considering possible violence or kind of tackling this issue when
it comes to First Nations people, or do you think
there is I mean, you can't answer for the whole
of Australia. I know, but I know in Newcastle you
spoke on a panel about this very topic. Um, and
unfortunately I was running around running the festival and didn't
(35:09):
get to see it, but I wondered if anything came
out of that because that session booked out, we probably
could have filled it 3 or 4 times over, which
indicates to me there is a greater interest.
S4 (35:20):
Look, there is a huge interest, and I wonder if
part of it is dipping your toe in the water.
You know, a good non confronting place to start is
to if you have family that goes back a few
generations here to to dig it all out. So it
can be a dipping of the toe in the water,
but it can also be a kind of um covering over,
(35:42):
you know, like a scab that's covered over something that
hasn't actually healed. Um, and of course, there is also
the looking for a duke in the family history tendency.
So it's quite a complicated thing, I think. And I,
I'm all for it and I'm all for people, you know,
recording the old stories from the old from, you know,
(36:02):
one's grandparents. I think that's good. Uh, and I think
very often it is. It's impelled, I think, maybe by
a kind of unconscious knowledge that something about the past
needs to be understood. And without going deeply, you think, okay, well,
what needs to be understood is, you know, there aren't
(36:25):
many marry Uncle Fred. And was there an illegitimate child,
that kind of thing. Whereas, in fact, the real question,
I mean, thinking about it in psychoanalytic terms, there's another
much deeper question underneath that, which is what do we
do about the past? What kind of stories should we tell,
and what is my connection to the past? So yeah,
(36:46):
I look at it with, as you can tell, I
have mixed feelings, particularly the DNA part of it that's now. Yeah. Look,
I've got to go away and think about why that
makes me slightly uneasy. It's as if it's. It's as
if it's taking a good thing and going kind of
too far away from perhaps the real, the real core
(37:09):
of it. It would be interesting to know. I know
Australians are mad keen on all this. I must find
out figures about whether countries that are not settler countries
have the same obsession. You know, do people in England
and Scotland have that same obsession with doing the family tree?
Somebody here.
S3 (37:26):
I think they do. If I go on my mother's
observations because she's found all the family in those parts,
and because once you do the DNA, you join. I mean,
this is why I will not do it. Because you join,
you become you can become sort of public. So then
other grenvilles in America or Scotland can connect with you.
(37:49):
So once you're identified and so she, she was at
one point getting messages from all around. I mean, honestly,
it was, um, for someone who's a bit of a Luddite,
she was tapped into this, like, on her phone constantly. Oh,
I've heard from Jim Milsom, who, you know, the relatives,
the bath side of the family. And then there's the Pennsylvania.
I mean, so it becomes you. You become part of
(38:11):
this network. It's really I mean, I don't know. I'm
a bit like you. I feel I feel uncomfortable about
my DNA being stored anywhere. But that's probably the skeptical journalist,
former journalist in me. But, um, I don't know. It
did become. I sensed it all became a little bit superficial.
S4 (38:30):
Yes. And the thing is, it is a rabbit hole
in the sense that no matter how much you find out,
there is always something more that you can find out.
The story never ends. So you can keep doing that
indefinitely without perhaps questioning yourself about. Is there a kind
of deeper? Is there a little bit of anxiety there
somehow that should be dealt with if.
S3 (38:53):
If people want to take the journey? And I'm not
saying they have to emulate yours or the way you
did it, and visit parts of Australia where your family
have been. But what are some of the things that
we could do? That, in a sense, is a conversation
with First Nations Australia.
S4 (39:14):
Yeah, that's such a good question because I'm conscious that
I'm both blessed and cursed to have those 3 or
4 generations, 4 or 5 generations, and the stories about them. Many, many,
many Australians only go back, you know, one generation. Many
arrived last week, but I think all of us can
ask the big questions, which is what does it mean
(39:35):
to be on? Let's not mince words. What does it
mean to be on stolen land when we're not going
to give it back? That's simply not possible. Um, so
is there something we should do about it, or do
we just move on and say, oh, well, it's all
it was all done too long ago. So some of
the things, I mean, I, I think we all live somewhere,
(39:58):
we all live on, you know, a couple of square
meters of stolen land. So one place you can start
just to really raise awareness is to do some homework.
Not about just, you know, the name of the group
that lived here, but try to work out, you know,
by the logic of the landscape. There's a beautiful creek.
Or it would have been a beautiful creek that I
passed just up here, Sir Zelman Cowen Park. And it's
(40:23):
got a terrible concrete drain running through the middle of it.
Probably some of you know it. They've obviously cleaned up
a creek, but you look at that and you think, okay,
that would have been a beautiful creek where people would
have lived. It would have had fresh water, freshwater mussels,
probably all kinds of food and every resource that they needed.
So suddenly that landscape becomes not bitumen and houses and
(40:47):
beautifully groomed park. It becomes a bit of bush. And
that's quite a revelation when you look at a bit
of a city that way. The other thing that somebody
told me they were doing, a historian called Stephen Gapps,
who's written a fabulous book about the Australian wars, said
that he was recently in Benalla and he got the
(41:08):
local history society to start thinking about agitating to rename
some of the streets and parks and so on, to again,
it's about thinking about it. It's not. The name itself
is probably not that important. It's the process of thinking
about it and the acknowledgement that is embedded in that thinking.
(41:28):
So I don't know, but I think this is I
think of this as a kind of homemade, do it
yourself truth telling. And I have a feeling that all
of us non-Indigenous Australians could think of a way of
doing it.
S3 (41:40):
And even that phrase, non-Indigenous Australians, you're really interested in
trying to rethink that, aren't you? And you, you, you
mention a word that you think might be more appropriate.
S4 (41:51):
Yeah, look, it's silly in a way, but non-Indigenous Australian,
there's something a bit evasive about that.
S3 (41:58):
Sort of corporate.
S4 (41:59):
Corporate. That's exactly right. Yes. That's right. Thank you. It's
it's very precise and it's accurate. But what it doesn't
do is give us a name. As ourselves, we're just
not something else. Um, so apart from the fact that
it's very awkward to say, it would be really nice
to have something else. Now, settlers or colonists? You know,
(42:23):
a lot of people would call the previous generations by
those names that might work for the first generation. But
we are not settlers. We're not doing the settling. We're
not doing the colonizing, although we're certainly benefiting from it.
From it. Um, so I thought a lot about all
the words that have been used, including the very derogatory
words or word that some Aboriginal groups use about us,
(42:46):
which is gubba, which is based on, um, government men.
And of course, in the time when that phrase was,
that word was used, uh, government men were to be
dreaded and feared because they were going to take your
children away. So what I came up with, I was
thinking about the New Zealanders who have that very useful word, Pakeha,
(43:06):
which is probably an English word, porkers, because the sealers
used to leave pigs on the islands down there as
a food source for future voyages. So possibly comes from
pork and white New Zealanders. non-Indigenous New Zealanders have taken
that on have have kind of owned that. Okay. We
(43:27):
are foreigners and we're going to use a word which
the Maori have taken and made their own, although it
was in fact a borrowing from our that complicated enmeshing
of things is very elegant in New Zealand. Now here
the only equivalent is the word balanda, which many of
you may know is often used in the northern part
(43:49):
of Australia to describe non-Indigenous Australians. And again, it comes
from a word that is not an indigenous word. It
comes from a word that they would have learnt from
the Indonesian visitors who have come to Australia for many centuries, seasonally.
And those people were colonised by the Dutch, and the
(44:13):
Dutch name for themselves was Hollander. So those Indonesian people
who'd been colonised would have called their colonisers Hollanders, which
in the Australian thing became adapted to balanda. Now that
seems to me lovely, because again, it's not an indigenous word,
because if we use any indigenous word to describe ourselves,
(44:34):
we're using only one of 300 languages. So that's probably
not going to work. So I have suggested half in
joke in the book that we should start calling ourselves Balanda.
I don't really expect people to take it on, but
you never know. I might have, you know, push, push
the stone and it might start rolling down the hill.
It's I think we do need a name for ourselves
(44:56):
that says we are not just the default from which
everybody else is an aberration.
S3 (45:02):
What's the response been to the book? Are people sharing
their own? You're starting to do festivals. You're talking about it.
Are people sharing any of their own personal stories and
histories with you?
S4 (45:13):
Yes it is. And actually, the first cab off the rank.
I got a series of about 4 or 5 letters
from New Zealand, all starting Kia ora. And, you know,
using the Maori language quite extensively. In fact, one of
them is in one of them is from someone who's
written a book that's also called unsettled. And he's about
to send me a copy. So enormous interest from across
(45:37):
the Tasman, but also enormous interest here from people embarked
on the same journey. I mean, I always feel as
a writer that if I'm interested in something, I'm just
an ordinary person. There's nothing particularly special or I'm not
an unacknowledged acknowledged legislator, as Shelley thought poets were nothing
as grand as that. If I'm interested in something or
(45:59):
troubled by it, if I have a question about it.
Good chance that a lot of other people will too.
So yes, I'm getting a lot of readers mail, and
if any of you have written those letters, I apologize
for taking so long to get back to it, but
it is a fairly overwhelming actually, the amount of very
positive so far. Response.
S3 (46:18):
Well, Kate may not have got back to you with
her letter, a written response, but we now have the opportunity.
You now have the opportunity to ask her some questions.
So we're going to go to questions from the audience.
And Kate will happily. And we've got some questions that
have already been submitted as well, which we might start
with actually. So this is from Inner Tea. When is
(46:42):
that point when you say to yourself, okay, I have
enough material in my mind to write another book. How
do you know it's enough for a book? It seems
like I've never started because there is no whole idea
in my mind.
S4 (46:55):
Ah, well, you're one of my lot because I never
have a whole idea in my mind when I start
the book either. Um, I just plunge in. I've heard
Thomas Keneally say the same thing. You just have to
plunge in. I mean, one of the one of the
difficulties of writing. I taught writing for many years, and
the hardest thing about it was to unteach people what
(47:16):
they had learned at school, which is that you have
to know it all laid out in advance. You've got
to do your plan. You've got to have your fabulous
opening sentence and your, you know, all that stuff, all
the beginning.
S3 (47:27):
Middle and end.
S4 (47:28):
Especially that. Yes. And you know, if you do most
creative writing classes, they talk about, you know, the narrative
arc and all that. So there's a whole lot of
formulas which are very daunting. And a friend and I,
Sue Wolfe, both felt that we must be doing it
wrong because we just kind of plunged in and, and
just started and let the material take us where we are.
(47:51):
Where it seemed to lead. And we went around and
interviewed a whole lot of terrific writers like Tom Keneally
and Peter Carey about how they did it. And to
our astonishment, they all said they did it that way too.
So don't wait. Just plunge in. The thing is, to
pick the bit that you think, oh, when I get
to that bit, I'll really enjoy writing that. Just start
with that bit. Think of it as like a movie
(48:13):
which is never shot in the order in which you
see it. It's just shot in random order and you
put it together later. So don't feel you have to
know it in advance.
S3 (48:23):
And another question from Rachel Carey. How do you overcome
any fears of writing vulnerably?
S4 (48:29):
Yeah, that's a good question. Um, this is probably the
most exposing. I had all kinds of nightmares before I
sent it to the publishers. And they were bad dreams
about exposure, you know? Um, I suppose in this case,
the the subject is important enough to me. And perhaps
(48:53):
also there's something about being my age and thinking, if
not now, when? Um. I have circled this all my life.
Ever since mum told me those stories as a child.
I've circled it. And, um. What does it matter if
people see what a deal I am? You know, that's
(49:15):
who I am. So, you know, um, they can hate
me or despise me if they like. But I think
perhaps the subject has to feel important enough for that.
And also some sense of putting your ego aside. Look,
I don't know, I find with every book that if
(49:36):
you ask me in about a year's time, I'll be
much clearer as to what I, what I actually did.
But I'm still processing it, I think.
S3 (49:44):
As someone who reads a lot of books for my job,
I think that some of the best writing comes from vulnerability.
The most potent writing?
S4 (49:54):
Yes. Um, look, I think the impetus has to come
from vulnerability, but it doesn't necessarily have to be on
the page. Um.
S3 (50:04):
A willingness to kind of put yourself out there, to
expose yourself to criticism, to scrutiny. I mean, any I
suppose anyone, any artist has to come to terms with that,
whether you're a visual artist, a performer on stage. I mean,
that is a great thing, isn't it? That's why we well,
we should admire artists.
S4 (50:23):
Yeah. Look, you're absolutely right. Um, and I think that's because, actually,
artists are driven. Like, we don't kind of have a
choice about it. So no matter, no matter where we
think it will take us. And that can be a
very bad place. Artists of all genres. Um, it's like,
you know, we simply have to do it. Our lives.
We know we're not being our complete selves if we're not.
(50:47):
It is a kind of compulsion, possibly a pathological one.
S3 (50:51):
We can take some questions from the audience now, and
there will be a microphone. Oh, we can see you.
Thank you.
S5 (50:59):
Um, my name is Jenny. And, um, your story is
my story as a sixth generation descendant of convicts and
on the Hawkesbury. And so I know what they likely did, like, like, uh,
Solomon Wiseman. Um, my question to you is just your
thoughts on these ideas. One, the idea of the Uniting
(51:19):
Church of Australia calls non-Indigenous Australians Second peoples. So that's
something that and I don't think it's just the Uniting Church.
Other organisations too. And I find that sort of for myself,
a great way to express.
S4 (51:35):
You know, that's that's really good.
S5 (51:37):
Um, the other the other question I wanted to ask, um,
I felt you sort of stopped when you got to
talking about the land, you know, that was taken and
stolen and that, yes, we weren't directly the settlers. Um,
but many of the Aboriginal academics would say that colonization
just continues because we have incredible economic privilege, white privilege,
(52:02):
so many other privileges based on that, we are on
stolen land as we stand right here, and that the
economy and everything, the sort of so-called progress of Australia
has come from that. So I just wondered about your
thoughts about that.
S4 (52:17):
Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. We are the beneficiaries of that.
And it is a zero sum game. Or maybe it
needn't be, but it has turned out that way. Installing,
stealing the land and benefiting so hugely. We have hugely
disadvantaged the people from whom we've stolen it, and that
it doesn't actually have to be that way. It doesn't
(52:40):
have to be a zero sum game. It is actually
about sharing. I mean, the most basic family knowledge that
children grow up with is to share. I'm the grandparent
of two little kids, and teaching to share is really difficult.
Kids really have to know how to learn how to
do it, be taught how to do it. And so, um,
(53:01):
when we look at that Aboriginal disadvantage and, uh, forget
that it comes from what we did, you know, it's
very easy to look at it in a judgmental kind
of way. Um, but if you had been, if you
had had your culture so catastrophically destroyed and, um, sort of, um,
(53:26):
you know, denigrated, had your children stolen as well as
your land, uh, your language, all of that. Um, you know,
that is damage that will take a lot of, uh, overcoming.
And it is our Our responsibility to take that on.
Thank you for making that point. Okay.
S6 (53:47):
Can you explain what you mean by the title?
S4 (53:51):
Ah, good question. The title. The question is what I
meant by the title. It seemed I'm not. The first
person to have used have used has exploited the ambiguities
of the word. So I have felt unsettled about having
the white privilege that I do ever since I. Well, look,
ever since my mother, when we were children, we often
(54:11):
went to picnics in the bush, and my mother would
unfailingly look around and say, this must have been Paradise
for the Aboriginal people. And I think that might actually
be the beginning of the unsettledness the uneasiness. So that's
one part of it. But of course, the other side
of the coin is that we have unsettled the people
who are here. So it's a it's a very rich word.
(54:32):
And that's why I have followed many other people in
using it. But I hope that it indicated that I
didn't have answers about any of it. The situation is
so unsettled and unsettling that it's not a matter of
a simple set of answers for any of us. Thank you.
S7 (54:52):
Kate. My name is Julianne. I'm just wondering if it's
easier for people who haven't got your background, who are
first generation to. Want to do something about their situation
(55:12):
but don't have the guilt?
S4 (55:16):
Yes. I think if you had arrived, I was hard
to imagine if you knew your family had arrived last week. Look,
when I was handing out for the yes thing for
the referendum, I happened to be doing it in a
place with a lot of newly arrived Australians in the
north of Melbourne. And what struck me was that they
were people of very goodwill. But not only did they
(55:39):
not understand what referendums were, or constitution or any of that,
the notion of a country that had a set of
people still alive and still extant, from whom the land
had quite recently been stolen, was not something that someone
from Albania or Poland actually had any kind of, uh,
there was no correlative in their world that they could
(56:02):
make sense of it. Yes. So if you're the lady
is saying that if the children of a migrant, you
might have a sense of recognition and acknowledgement and want
to do something, but you don't have that kind of
personal thing. And I think that is absolutely right. Um, in,
(56:23):
in a way, I feel privileged to have that background
because it gives me that, that sort of heart understanding
of exactly what I've done to stand on the actual
bit of land that your actual blood relative stole, you
cannot evade it. It becomes very personal. Whereas for more
(56:44):
newly arrived people, it's an act of great generosity for
them to kind of make that leap of imagination.
S3 (56:50):
Kate, thank you. Thank you so much for this rich discussion,
and I'm sure everyone will feel possibly a little bit
more willing to contemplate some of some of the themes,
if not to do it for their own family. But
I think just in reading your book to think about this.
It's been wonderful. Thank you.
S4 (57:10):
Thank you Rosemary, that was wonderful. And thank you.
S1 (57:26):
Thank you for listening to Kate Grenville Unsettled, a special
broadcast from the Melbourne Writers Festival 2025, in partnership with
Vision Australia Library. Kate Grenville's book, Unsettled A Journey Through
Time and Place, is available in Daisy audio through Vision
Australia Library, and you can find more information about the
wonderful services and content available through Vision Australia Library by
(57:46):
heading to Vision Australia Library or calling 1300Â 654Â 656. That's 1300Â 654Â 656.
If you'd like to share this program with someone, it's
available via podcast. All you need to do is search
for interview highlights from Vision Australia Radio wherever you get
(58:07):
your podcasts. Thank you for listening to this special broadcast
presented by Vision Australia Library and Melbourne Writers Festival here
on Vision Australia Radio, VA radio, digital and online at
VA radio Dot.
On Vision Australia Radio. Welcome to this special broadcast thanks
to Vision Australia Library in partnership with the Melbourne Writers
Festival 2025 at the Vision Australia Library on Friday the
9th of May, Melbourne Writers Festival held a conversation with
award winning author Kate Grenville, the beloved author of The
Secret River Kate discusses unsettled, a deeply personal memoir of
(00:36):
reckoning with what it means to be on land that
was taken from other people. Vision Australia Radio is a
proud media partner to Melbourne Writers Festival, and we hope
you enjoyed this special broadcast of Kate Grenville Unsettled, presented
by Vision Australia Library.
S2 (00:55):
Welcome everyone to the Vision Australia Library. We're delighted to
have you with us this evening in conversation with Kate
Grenville for the Melbourne Writers Festival. As we begin this evening,
we take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of
the land on which we gather today here at Kooyong.
It's the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. We pay
(01:19):
our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, recognising
their rich history over tens of thousands of years as
the original storytellers of this land. Oral storytelling is so
important to our Vision Australia library community, and as a
library service, we're committed to telling the First Nations stories
(01:41):
and continuing to support the traditions of oral storytelling. So
my name is Justine Heath and I'm the acting CEO
of Vision Australia. Vision Australia is Australia's leading service provider
for people living with blindness and low vision. Our library
service is hosting tonight's event, Vision Australia Library is a
(02:05):
national public library for Australians living with a print disability.
We open up a world of books and learning in
accessible audio, in braille, in digital formats, and support a
wonderful community of readers and writers across the country. So
it's fantastic to welcome some of our members and many
(02:25):
of our volunteers here with us tonight, as well as
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gather at Vision Australia to do a roll call and
a description of the space in which we're meeting. Now,
with so many people here tonight, we're not going to
be able to do a roll call. But I will
describe the the room that we're in. This is the
(02:46):
large conference room, and we have a stage at the
front with our guests sitting on stage on sofas. I'm
standing at the front and you all came in at
a door to to your left. So now we get
to the important part of this evening and that's to
introduce Kate Grenville. So I'm really thrilled to welcome you Kate.
(03:08):
Kate is one of Australia's most celebrated writers, having published
18 books, including international bestseller The Secret River. One of
our library staff has a book given to her by
her mother 21 years ago in Alice Springs and signed
by Kate Grenville, which has tonight been signed again and
(03:29):
dated with this year. So it's a wonderful achievement, Kate,
and we're so thrilled that you're here tonight. So, as
previously mentioned, Kate's latest book, Unsettled A Journey Through Time
and Place, is described as a deeply personal memoir, reckoning
with what it means to be on land that's taken
(03:51):
from other people. Kate intertwines her family history with a
broader story of First Nations peoples dispossession, and Kate speaks
about historical facts and historical fictions, and writing challenging histories
and confronting the ghosts of the past. We're also very
lucky to have with us tonight, Rosemarie Milsome and Kate
(04:11):
will be in conversation with Rosemarie, and Rosemarie is an
award winning journalist and the founding director of the Newcastle
Writers Festival. Her work has been published in the Sydney
Morning Herald and Vogue Australia, and she's worked as a
member of the ABC broadcast team since 2016. So welcome, Kate,
and welcome, Rosemary. Thank you.
S3 (04:34):
Thank you. This is a real pleasure to be here.
I had the privilege of speaking to Kate a couple
of weeks ago about her book, and it's really great
to have an opportunity, because I've been thinking about it
a lot since then and different issues have come up
for me. So I think we'll take this conversation possibly
in different paths. I think I would like Kate to
(04:54):
Kate to start with a reading because it always helps,
I think, to hear the voice of the writer. Um,
you know, when we're speaking, you might not necessarily glean
that if you haven't read the book. And, um, this
is a really accessible book. I feel like, um, Kate
is all of us. Katie's. Katie's sort of representing our own, um, shortcomings,
(05:18):
our own questions around our place in this country. Um,
it's not didactic. She doesn't lecture us. It's so accessible.
And I think that you'll get a sense of that
if you. If you hear her, read a short passage.
S4 (05:32):
Thanks very much, Rosemarie. And lovely to be here. Thanks.
Thanks for coming. And, uh, it's fantastic to be involved,
even in this small way, with the work that Vision
Australia does. So this is the this is the start
of the book. I was 10 or 11 when one
day in 1960 or 1961, my class walked down from
(05:53):
North Sydney Demonstration School to Ball's Head, overlooking Sydney Harbour.
I remember as Grizzling about having to walk so far.
It was hot, the sun blasting down as we trailed along.
But when we got there, we saw something that's been
burned into my memory ever since. We're standing on the
high point at the end of Ball's Head, the harbour.
(06:16):
Glittering bluely. We've left the boring suburban streets behind. Out
here it's all sun and sky and trees bending in
the breeze. We're lined up listening to the teacher. Because
we're going to have to answer the questions on our
excursion sheet. And we're going to have to draw the
thing we've come to see, which is on the ground
(06:39):
behind a bright white painted council fence. The same bright
white paint has picked out a big shape engraved on
the rock. It's nothing more than a simple outline, a whale,
or maybe a fish. Shh. We're not that impressed except
by how big it is. It had been done, Mrs.
(07:00):
Linney said, by Aboriginal people, not the white paint. Mrs.
Linney made that clear. They'd just done the groove in
the rock to make the picture. We'd put the paint
there so you could see it better. I'd like to
be able to say that looking at that whale on
the rock was the first moment that Aboriginal people became
real to me. I'd like to say it was the
(07:23):
start of a lifetime's uncomfortable knowledge. I could pretend I
felt sad or puzzled or curious or sorry, but the
truth is, I don't remember what I felt. It seems
as if I could reconstruct the place, molecule by molecule.
So I must have felt something. But I'd be lying
if I said I knew what. Still, that piercingly vivid
(07:46):
visual memory lodged in me like a splinter. The excursion
was part of a social studies segment about the Aborigines.
In class we'd made paper boomerangs and drawn pictures of
bark shelters. The Aboriginal people were exotic and picturesque, but
they were long ago and they were gone. That's what
(08:07):
this engraving was telling us. They were here, but now
they've gone. When I was a child, the gone part
wasn't talked about much. Measles was mentioned a lot and
so was the flu. Mostly, though, there was a sense
of something inevitable, something taking its natural course, like the
(08:27):
turning of the seasons. These days we know a lot
more about how that going happened. Measles and the flu
did play their part, but above all, it was men
who wanted somebody else's land and had the weapons and
the hardness of heart to use them. For the First
Nations going took the form of being hounded, harassed, starved,
(08:50):
separated from kin, forced over cliffs, drowned, poisoned and shot.
It meant fighting a war for their homeland over a
century and a half, and resisting their dispossession right up
to the present. Until recently, the terrible story of that
long war was smothered into silence. But these days, the
(09:12):
facts about what happened are well researched, well known and
beyond dispute. For us non-Indigenous Australians, the question now isn't
what happened. It's what do we do now that we know?
And essentially, that's where that story began with that question
in my mind.
S3 (09:33):
You often talk about when you start a book, there's
a question at the core of it, and you've just
outlined the question at the centre of this book. I
think a lot of us in the audience can relate
to that sense of growing up and having an education
in Australia and having huge gaps in that understanding of
our First Nations people. Do you think that lack of knowledge, um,
(09:58):
not knowing quite what went on when we were growing up,
you know, is that part of our fear of tackling
our role in colonisation?
S4 (10:09):
Yes. In fact, I think it might even be a
bit more than that because we didn't grow up with
a sense of a gap. It was well filled. I'm
sure some of you would remember the plastic shape of
Australia that you had to like, a stencil that we
drew around and then drew endless dotted lines representing all
those hopeless explorers. I can tell you a great deal
(10:31):
about all those hopeless explorers, but about the Aboriginal people,
there was just, um, a gap. It's as I said,
it's it's as if they. Yes, they were here, but
now they're kind of irrelevant. So what it's required in
more recent times is not perhaps not unlearning something, but
realizing the extent of our ignorance. And that's quite confronting.
(10:54):
You know, we went to all those social studies classes.
We thought we knew a bit about our history. Turns
out we didn't. Or we knew a tiny, misleading fraction
of it.
S3 (11:07):
You go on a journey, you take this personal journey and,
you know, in a sense you're saying you said you
do say it requires an open heart and an open mind.
Is it that simple?
S4 (11:20):
Well, having an open heart and an open mind is
never simple, I don't think. I mean, we're kind of
hard wired to leap to a story and then stick
to it, I think. And so those of us who
were told all that stuff in our childhood are finding
it very difficult to rethink it. And of course, once
(11:41):
you start to know what actually happened on the frontier,
the unremitting, relentless violence and deliberate cruelty. In many cases,
that is terribly confronting stuff to know that, you know,
our lot. Basically the colonists were part of it. And
as with any other kind of thing that's confronting, it's
(12:02):
a whole lot easier to just kind of close the
heart and even close the mind if you can. It
is actually possible, isn't it, to have an open mind
but a closed heart? And I think maybe that's where
a lot of us in Australia are at the moment.
We do know the facts. We've read books like, um,
David Marr's Killing for country, so we kind of know
(12:25):
what happened. But the next step is actually the more
difficult one to kind of, um, get that very horrible
stuff out of the dark cupboard and bring it out
and make it part of our own lives. And so
that's that's why I wrote the book, really, to try
and see if I was brave enough, really, to go
(12:47):
into the dark place and really look at that history
through the lens of my own family, because my family
goes back 4 or 5 generations in this country, and
in each generation they were actually on the frontier. Each
generation kept moving out, looking for more land for their
sheep and cattle and also for every generation. My mother
(13:09):
made sure that I have a little snippet of family Story.
So that gave me a kind of doorway into that
very difficult. It was a kind of familiarity. It started
with family, something very close to me, something I knew,
and the places where those stories happened. You know, they
were places in many cases. I had been to them before,
(13:32):
but this was the chance to go into them in
a different way and sort of bolstered, perhaps, by that
familiarity to confront the unconfronted. Unconfortable.
S3 (13:45):
This isn't the first time you've written about your family.
We are all very aware of your incredible books. You
know The Secret River, particularly where you use it. You
use your own family's story and history as a springboard
into fiction. Was that an emotional decision at the time?
(14:05):
Were you not ready? Could you have even tackled non-fiction
at that point in relation to your family? And I
think the phrase you use, which I think is so powerful, um,
you know, your family's history in Australia, on the sharp
edge of the moving blade that was colonisation. Could you
have taken the journey you've just taken back when you
(14:27):
were grappling with it, you were grappling with it creatively.
So it was on your mind. What what was the
decision to move into fiction and fictionalize? Who was your
Solomon Wiseman? Is is Kate's actual relative fictionalizes. We often
all of us who've read The Secret River have even
watched the series. Um, fictionalizes William Thornhill.
S4 (14:50):
Yeah, it's a really good question, actually. The secret River
began as nonfiction, which is interesting. I thought I was
going to write a kind of biography of my great
great great grandfather, who was a convict who came out
here in 1806. Solomon Wiseman I knew a fair bit
about him, and he was a bit of a kind
of he was known as the rogue of the road.
(15:11):
So he was a bit of a celebrity of his time.
So there was a lovely, rich, uh, bed of documents
that I knew I could draw on. So I thought
it wouldn't it be interesting to write a biography of
this man and to show how it was moment to moment,
when he went up the Hawkesbury River just outside of
Sydney and grabbed 100 acres for himself. I thought I
(15:35):
could just tease that apart. So, um, it turned into
a novel because I actually couldn't find anything about how
he dealt with the Aboriginal people that he displaced. And
I have to say, I remember the moment when I
realised that I would have to write if I was
going to write it at all. It would have to
be a novel to fill in some of the gaps
that the documentation wasn't giving me. And, you know, that's
(15:59):
hard historical fiction, which I hadn't really written before, only
in a frivolous way. You know, you've got to work
out the logistics. Like, you know, what did they brush
their teeth with, if anything? Um, how did they hold
their pants up without elastic? All that kind of thing?
My heart sank at the idea of actually having to
sort that out. But I did, because I by then
(16:21):
I had I had gone so deeply into the family
story and realising that it was a microcosm of the
national story. And I was, you know, I could see
how important it was to tell the story. Um, and
there was always that little bit of distance. William Thornhill
(16:42):
in the novel is not my great great grandfather, partly
because I don't know whether my great great grandfather took
part in violence against Aboriginal people, and I probably never will.
There's no documents about it. So, you know, the story
had to be told. And in telling it in fiction,
there was a way of holding it at a distance.
(17:03):
When you write a novel, you're thinking about the shape
of the story. You want it to be beautiful and satisfying.
You're thinking about every sentence. You want it to be
beautiful and energetic, energetic and all those sorts of things.
So there's a whole a whole lot of layers of
distance between me and the subject. So that was in 2000.
I started to write that book. So it's taken me
(17:25):
25 years to come all the way back to Solomon Wiseman.
But now something about the referendum made me brave enough
or angry enough to think, okay, I have had the
screen of fiction between me and all this, not just
the secret River, but Sarah Thornhill, the lieutenant, even a
(17:47):
roommate of leaves. They all have that screen of fiction
based on fact. This time I'm just going to be
me in the landscape. Um. Ignorant but open. And that was. Yeah,
it was. It was a difficult thing to do. And
at the time, I didn't think it would be a
(18:09):
book because I thought, no one will read this. Even
if it turns into a some kind of a narrative. Um,
and in any case, I will be attacked from all
sides if I write this. Uh, so I just set
off writing it for myself. Really? And, um, here it
is as a published book, which kind of still surprises
(18:31):
me in some ways.
S3 (18:32):
Why would you have been attacked by both sides? What?
What do you think would have triggered that?
S4 (18:38):
Well, you may be aware that the secret River I
was attacked mostly by white historians who were very cranky.
That a novelist, actually. What they were really cranky about.
Don't tell them I said this. What they were really
cranky about was that novelists sell more copies than historians.
And I don't blame them for being cranky. After all,
(19:00):
Dan Brown sells far more copies than literary novelists like me.
So there's a kind of, you know, chain of great
chain of being of envy, really. Um, and at the time,
Aboriginal people were incredibly Aboriginal people came up to me
in the street, recognising me to shake my hand and
thank me for writing the book. Um, but the world
(19:23):
has changed. And with this one, I'm very aware that
it's me putting a white person at the centre of
the story again. So, you know, it would be quite
legitimate for an Aboriginal person to say, well, get out
of the way. You know, it's our turn to start
telling the stories. I did that, um, because I think
(19:44):
we white people, actually, it's time for us to not
keep telling stories about Aboriginal people in our history, but
actually hold the mirror up and look at ourselves and
do a bit of soul searching. Um, look, the attacks
haven't happened yet and perhaps they won't. Um, I was
not prepared for it with The Secret River and it happened.
(20:04):
I am prepared for it this time. And perhaps, God willing,
it won't happen.
S3 (20:08):
I don't think it's going to. Because the tone you're taking,
you're not telling an Aboriginal story. You're not trying to
put yourself in the centre of their world or, you know,
co-opt their history or their their relationship with this country.
You are, as you said, placing yourself ignorant but open.
(20:31):
And I can't see how anyone you know. Well, I
can actually. I mean, look what's happening in America. But
I think that there's there's respect for that approach. Um,
can you set a scene, particularly for those not familiar
with Wisemans Ferry, which is where your great great great grandfather,
great great grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, took up land north of Sydney?
(20:55):
Can you describe it and also how you felt revisiting it?
You had been there before, but revisiting it in connection
with this book, because that's essentially where the story starts.
The journey starts.
S4 (21:07):
That's right. It's the family story gave me a very
simple structure for the book, which is to simply follow
out from Sydney or to all the places where the
family went. So Wisemans ferry is about 50 miles north
of Sydney on the Hawkesbury River, and the family story
is always that Solomon Wiseman came out here as a
convict was freed quite quickly, as many of them were.
(21:30):
And then the family story says he then went up
the Hawkesbury River and took up land. Now, even back
in 2000, when I was writing The Secret River, I
was well aware that the phrase took up was deceitful.
Let's let's not mince words. What he simply did was
(21:50):
take the land, but how different it is. And it
made me start thinking about the not only the story
itself of the past, the facts, but the way we
tell the story shapes the reality of it in our minds. So,
you know, take up is a wonderfully innocent thing. You know,
you take up a bit of knitting that you haven't
finished or.
S3 (22:11):
Gardening.
S4 (22:11):
Gardening. You take up gardening. That's right. It's got this
lovely benign feeling. In fact, it's got a sense that
you're actually kind of correcting something. You're finishing something that
needs to be finished. It's a good thing to do.
Whereas if you go up the Hawkesbury and you take land,
there is no getting away from the fact that you
have actually stolen it. So I had been there many times.
I'd been there first with mum when I was about ten,
(22:34):
and she showed me the room where Solomon Wiseman is
supposed to have killed his first wife by pushing her
down the stairs. And there's one of the rooms which
I've stayed in, which he's supposed to haunt all that,
all that kind of nonsense. Anyway, I had been there
many times, and I knew at one level quite a
lot about it. Once I'd done the research and I
(22:56):
knew about the Darug, the local people, and I had
heard about these things called yam daisies, which had been
growing on the banks of the Hawkesbury. But it wasn't
until I went back and I knew how important the
yam daisies were. They were a staple diet for the
Darug and for many other people throughout Australia. Here in
(23:17):
Victoria they were called Murnong and they were an absolutely
staple diet. They grew everywhere. The thing about them is,
as a Darug man explained to me, you can eat
most of them and then keep a bit to plant,
just like an Irishman with a potato, he said. And
to me, that was like a revelation about what had
happened between black and white. Solomon Wiseman wanted to plant
(23:40):
his not potatoes, probably, but corn or wheat, and he
would have. But the thing is. And so he dug
up the yam daisies on the rich river flats where
they grew. But the thing is, he would have called
them yam daisies, which means that he would have known
that they were part of the Aboriginal diet. And yet
(24:01):
he dug them up and replaced them with his own food.
No wonder there was trouble, you know. No wonder there
was sort of existential trouble. So when I went back
there just recently for this, for this, the place was
almost too familiar, and I've never much liked it. It's
the river runs at the base of enormous, dramatic sandstone cliffs,
(24:22):
so it's quite claustrophobic. And it's always kind of hot,
and the sun never seems to shine properly there. To
my mind, it's actually a very haunted landscape. But I
went down to a place where I had gone all
those many years ago when I was researching the secret
River to try to find, um, 20 years ago, I
(24:43):
had gone. And, you know, I've always wanted to be
an archaeologist. And I thought, I wonder if there are
any remnants of the original ferry down on the bank
where I knew it had been. So I remember being
there one very hot morning, scratching away at the dirt,
finding various things which I allowed myself to pretend were
parts of Solomon Wiseman's original ferry. But this time I
(25:05):
looked at myself doing that with some kind of horror
because I thought, yeah, okay, Solomon Wiseman was here and
he had the ferry and all that. But actually, what's
really significant is that this is where the Murnong would
have grown. They called Medini up on the Hawkesbury. This
right where I'm standing is where they would have grown.
How come I didn't realize that 20 years ago. So
(25:28):
this book is very much about me thinking. I have
always kind of known these things, but I've never known
them in my heart. And now I am. And that's
quite a quite a confronting feeling.
S3 (25:41):
It's not a straightforward journey. It's not a kind of, um,
you know, family greatest hits, you know, let's let's go
visit these, um, you know, you, you struggle with because
you travel. And I was interested because I'm from the
Hunter Hunter region. How much of your family history takes
in the Hunter region? Up into the Hunter Valley, upper Hunter,
(26:02):
and then into north north, north western New South Wales?
Your family really did follow development. Follow settlement. But it's
not a pleasant journey, is it? It's not a it's
you have moments of being very uncomfortable and and I
get the sense that you possibly considered, you know, like,
(26:23):
get me out of here. Why? What have I done this.
S4 (26:26):
Yes. That's right. And in fact, it was in the
Hunter Valley. The Hunter Valley used to be a most beautiful,
idyllic place in my childhood. It was where you went
for a weekend away, and it was absolutely beautiful. You know,
pampered horses behind white fences and beautiful little boutique vineyards.
That's what it was. But it is unfortunately underlain by
(26:48):
an enormous amount of coal. So the Hunter Valley, when
you go there now, has been just pulverized into this.
I mean, the scale of it, I suppose I'm innocent,
but it is frightening. Um, so it was there where
one of my great great grandfather, uh, took up land, uh,
(27:09):
in the Hunter Valley. So I went and had a
look at the place and, you know, stood on the
ground here. Here's where it happened. All that kind of
trying to whip myself into a a kind of feeling
about it, a recognition of some kind. But because the
landscape was so devastated, part of the land that he
had has now in fact been dug up, turned inside
(27:30):
out into this weird kind of purple rock. It is
so ugly. It's like Mars. It was extremely depressing, and
it made me wonder what I was doing in a
big way. I mean, I thought on the one hand,
this is a very useful metaphor. The damage that we
have done here to the land is a kind of
(27:51):
metaphor for the damage that we did to the people
and the world that was here before. And perhaps that's
why it was in that place that I thought, this
is hopeless. I thought I was going to do some
kind of pilgrimage. I used that rather, you know, pompous
kind of word. But actually, what am I really doing?
The landscape. I can never go back to that. This
(28:13):
is not the landscape that Aboriginal people lived on. It's
been two to destroyed for that. So I decided to
just give up and go home. And I remember I
left the place where my great great grandfather had been,
and there was a there was a crossroads, a classic,
you know, the classic metaphor left was home. If I
(28:34):
turned right, I would keep on going. And I stopped
there and I was just dithering. I was a classic
old lady, dithering, putting the indicator left, putting the indicator
right other way round.
S3 (28:46):
That's dangerous. Up in the hunter with all the men
and their big beast of vehicles.
S4 (28:50):
Absolutely. It's full of men in utes, and they're those
high performance utes. And boy, do they go fast. I
had been monstered all the way up there by these things,
tailgating me. Anyway, as I sat there dithering, one of
them pulled up behind me and I just knew without
looking that a big hand was poised to give me
a great blast on the horn. So kind of out
(29:12):
of fright, really. Perhaps I just happen to have the
indicator on the right hand side. I turn right and
I went on and like a lot of things, when
you've given up on the other side of giving up.
Giving up something else opens. Something else presents itself. And
my mood changed, I became less. Kind of confident about
(29:33):
what I was doing. Uh, I felt much less confident
after that, but that lack of confidence seemed appropriate for
what I was doing.
S3 (29:43):
You just mentioned mood, and when we were hovering near
Kate's books there on the table, just before we started
our conversation, I said, you know, what do you think
when you see all the books? You know, it's incredible,
all this work. And she said, you know, I can
sense the mood of of each of them. And I
thought that was really interesting observation. And I wonder, what's
(30:04):
the mood of this book if you had to describe it?
S4 (30:08):
Ah, yeah. The mood of this book is like none
of the others, because I wrote it at very high speed,
which I don't usually do. And although I did do
a lot of drafts with the help of my fabulous editor. Um,
it wasn't like the novels. I wasn't. I wasn't kind
of dwelling on every jewel like sentence. This. I was
doing something different in this book. So the mood was
(30:29):
kind of there was something determined and obstinate and kind
of beating my head against a difficulty about it. It
was that kind of mood. And there was also an
element of kind of rage. Uh, you know, the referendum
was not long over, uh, and I was very disappointed,
as many people were, um, I had a kind of, um,
(30:53):
and there was also a kind of once I realized
that it could be a book, I also had a
kind of almost an evangelical feeling of wanting to share
the fact that you can do this journey and survive.
You can go into those dark places and you can
come out. It hasn't destroyed you, and you can actually
look at things now. Um, it's not something to be
(31:14):
frightened of.
S3 (31:16):
I wonder, too, if we often feel a sense of guilt.
You know this. And you do hear some people say, well,
you know, it's my relatives. Why should I feel guilt?
I didn't do anything. Um, guilt is a word that
comes up a lot when we're looking at, um, reconciling
our our kind of place in this country's our place,
(31:40):
which is a very short part of this country's history.
But I think what comes through in this book, and
I think and it's a more valuable, um, emotion or
is sorrow, I think, and maybe that's harder to reconcile
with a sense of sorrow about what's happened and our
(32:02):
part in it.
S4 (32:03):
Yeah. Look, that's a very perceptive thing, that it's actually
harder because the thing about guilt, um, I thought a
lot about this in writing the book. Am I feeling guilty? Um.
and a lot of people say, as you say, you know,
intergenerational guilt, there's no such thing, etc.. So I decided
that guilt. The thing about guilt is that it suggests
(32:26):
its opposite. It's one of those words where you think
of the word and you immediately also get it balanced.
So guilt and innocence, they go together. When you think
of the word guilt, you also think about innocence. And
in between those things are a whole lot of, um,
mechanisms that, you know, most societies have invented compensation or
punishment or, um, you know, atonement. So there's a whole
(32:50):
little process that can take you from guilt to innocence.
This is quite apart from the fact that, you know,
you didn't personally do it.
S3 (32:59):
And language is a very clever way of doing that.
S4 (33:01):
Yes, that's that's exactly right. So I think guilt is
not appropriate for what happened in the past. I think
we can feel guilty for what we're failing to do
in the present, but that's that's a different kind of guilt.
But I think that you're quite right. Sorrow was the overwhelming.
I burst into tears several times on this journey, just
(33:26):
not that I had thought of any particularly specifically tragic thing,
but to be in the beautiful parts of the landscape
and realize recognize what had been here and what is
irretrievably lost is is terrible sorrow. And of course, the
other feeling is shame. Shame is not like guilt, because
(33:47):
there is no way that shame can be rubbed out.
You can only accept shame. I think if you've done
something bad and you feel ashamed of it, you have
to just keep waking up at three in the morning
and regretting it. There's no real escape.
S3 (34:05):
Do you think there is an increasing awareness among Australians,
and particularly I'm interested in the growth of, I mean,
everyone getting their DNA tested and where do I come
from and tracing it back and, um, I mean, I
have a theory that because it's happened to my own mother,
that once you hit a certain age, suddenly you just
become obsessed with the family tree. Hasn't hit me yet,
but I'm sure it's on the horizon. It's definitely consuming
(34:28):
her at the moment, and I should tune in a
little bit more. Um, you know, I should focus a
little bit more when she's talking to me about it,
because it kind of goes over my head. These names
and people don't mean a lot to me. You know,
they're so long ago. But do you think, um, Australians
are with with this sort of search and more interest
in ancestry and where we come from, more open to
(34:48):
considering possible violence or kind of tackling this issue when
it comes to First Nations people, or do you think
there is I mean, you can't answer for the whole
of Australia. I know, but I know in Newcastle you
spoke on a panel about this very topic. Um, and
unfortunately I was running around running the festival and didn't
(35:09):
get to see it, but I wondered if anything came
out of that because that session booked out, we probably
could have filled it 3 or 4 times over, which
indicates to me there is a greater interest.
S4 (35:20):
Look, there is a huge interest, and I wonder if
part of it is dipping your toe in the water.
You know, a good non confronting place to start is
to if you have family that goes back a few
generations here to to dig it all out. So it
can be a dipping of the toe in the water,
but it can also be a kind of um covering over,
(35:42):
you know, like a scab that's covered over something that
hasn't actually healed. Um, and of course, there is also
the looking for a duke in the family history tendency.
So it's quite a complicated thing, I think. And I,
I'm all for it and I'm all for people, you know,
recording the old stories from the old from, you know,
(36:02):
one's grandparents. I think that's good. Uh, and I think
very often it is. It's impelled, I think, maybe by
a kind of unconscious knowledge that something about the past
needs to be understood. And without going deeply, you think, okay, well,
what needs to be understood is, you know, there aren't
(36:25):
many marry Uncle Fred. And was there an illegitimate child,
that kind of thing. Whereas, in fact, the real question,
I mean, thinking about it in psychoanalytic terms, there's another
much deeper question underneath that, which is what do we
do about the past? What kind of stories should we tell,
and what is my connection to the past? So yeah,
(36:46):
I look at it with, as you can tell, I
have mixed feelings, particularly the DNA part of it that's now. Yeah. Look,
I've got to go away and think about why that
makes me slightly uneasy. It's as if it's. It's as
if it's taking a good thing and going kind of
too far away from perhaps the real, the real core
(37:09):
of it. It would be interesting to know. I know
Australians are mad keen on all this. I must find
out figures about whether countries that are not settler countries
have the same obsession. You know, do people in England
and Scotland have that same obsession with doing the family tree?
Somebody here.
S3 (37:26):
I think they do. If I go on my mother's
observations because she's found all the family in those parts,
and because once you do the DNA, you join. I mean,
this is why I will not do it. Because you join,
you become you can become sort of public. So then
other grenvilles in America or Scotland can connect with you.
(37:49):
So once you're identified and so she, she was at
one point getting messages from all around. I mean, honestly,
it was, um, for someone who's a bit of a Luddite,
she was tapped into this, like, on her phone constantly. Oh,
I've heard from Jim Milsom, who, you know, the relatives,
the bath side of the family. And then there's the Pennsylvania.
I mean, so it becomes you. You become part of
(38:11):
this network. It's really I mean, I don't know. I'm
a bit like you. I feel I feel uncomfortable about
my DNA being stored anywhere. But that's probably the skeptical journalist,
former journalist in me. But, um, I don't know. It
did become. I sensed it all became a little bit superficial.
S4 (38:30):
Yes. And the thing is, it is a rabbit hole
in the sense that no matter how much you find out,
there is always something more that you can find out.
The story never ends. So you can keep doing that
indefinitely without perhaps questioning yourself about. Is there a kind
of deeper? Is there a little bit of anxiety there
somehow that should be dealt with if.
S3 (38:53):
If people want to take the journey? And I'm not
saying they have to emulate yours or the way you
did it, and visit parts of Australia where your family
have been. But what are some of the things that
we could do? That, in a sense, is a conversation
with First Nations Australia.
S4 (39:14):
Yeah, that's such a good question because I'm conscious that
I'm both blessed and cursed to have those 3 or
4 generations, 4 or 5 generations, and the stories about them. Many, many,
many Australians only go back, you know, one generation. Many
arrived last week, but I think all of us can
ask the big questions, which is what does it mean
(39:35):
to be on? Let's not mince words. What does it
mean to be on stolen land when we're not going
to give it back? That's simply not possible. Um, so
is there something we should do about it, or do
we just move on and say, oh, well, it's all
it was all done too long ago. So some of
the things, I mean, I, I think we all live somewhere,
(39:58):
we all live on, you know, a couple of square
meters of stolen land. So one place you can start
just to really raise awareness is to do some homework.
Not about just, you know, the name of the group
that lived here, but try to work out, you know,
by the logic of the landscape. There's a beautiful creek.
Or it would have been a beautiful creek that I
passed just up here, Sir Zelman Cowen Park. And it's
(40:23):
got a terrible concrete drain running through the middle of it.
Probably some of you know it. They've obviously cleaned up
a creek, but you look at that and you think, okay,
that would have been a beautiful creek where people would
have lived. It would have had fresh water, freshwater mussels,
probably all kinds of food and every resource that they needed.
So suddenly that landscape becomes not bitumen and houses and
(40:47):
beautifully groomed park. It becomes a bit of bush. And
that's quite a revelation when you look at a bit
of a city that way. The other thing that somebody
told me they were doing, a historian called Stephen Gapps,
who's written a fabulous book about the Australian wars, said
that he was recently in Benalla and he got the
(41:08):
local history society to start thinking about agitating to rename
some of the streets and parks and so on, to again,
it's about thinking about it. It's not. The name itself
is probably not that important. It's the process of thinking
about it and the acknowledgement that is embedded in that thinking.
(41:28):
So I don't know, but I think this is I
think of this as a kind of homemade, do it
yourself truth telling. And I have a feeling that all
of us non-Indigenous Australians could think of a way of
doing it.
S3 (41:40):
And even that phrase, non-Indigenous Australians, you're really interested in
trying to rethink that, aren't you? And you, you, you
mention a word that you think might be more appropriate.
S4 (41:51):
Yeah, look, it's silly in a way, but non-Indigenous Australian,
there's something a bit evasive about that.
S3 (41:58):
Sort of corporate.
S4 (41:59):
Corporate. That's exactly right. Yes. That's right. Thank you. It's
it's very precise and it's accurate. But what it doesn't
do is give us a name. As ourselves, we're just
not something else. Um, so apart from the fact that
it's very awkward to say, it would be really nice
to have something else. Now, settlers or colonists? You know,
(42:23):
a lot of people would call the previous generations by
those names that might work for the first generation. But
we are not settlers. We're not doing the settling. We're
not doing the colonizing, although we're certainly benefiting from it.
From it. Um, so I thought a lot about all
the words that have been used, including the very derogatory
words or word that some Aboriginal groups use about us,
(42:46):
which is gubba, which is based on, um, government men.
And of course, in the time when that phrase was,
that word was used, uh, government men were to be
dreaded and feared because they were going to take your
children away. So what I came up with, I was
thinking about the New Zealanders who have that very useful word, Pakeha,
(43:06):
which is probably an English word, porkers, because the sealers
used to leave pigs on the islands down there as
a food source for future voyages. So possibly comes from
pork and white New Zealanders. non-Indigenous New Zealanders have taken
that on have have kind of owned that. Okay. We
(43:27):
are foreigners and we're going to use a word which
the Maori have taken and made their own, although it
was in fact a borrowing from our that complicated enmeshing
of things is very elegant in New Zealand. Now here
the only equivalent is the word balanda, which many of
you may know is often used in the northern part
(43:49):
of Australia to describe non-Indigenous Australians. And again, it comes
from a word that is not an indigenous word. It
comes from a word that they would have learnt from
the Indonesian visitors who have come to Australia for many centuries, seasonally.
And those people were colonised by the Dutch, and the
(44:13):
Dutch name for themselves was Hollander. So those Indonesian people
who'd been colonised would have called their colonisers Hollanders, which
in the Australian thing became adapted to balanda. Now that
seems to me lovely, because again, it's not an indigenous word,
because if we use any indigenous word to describe ourselves,
(44:34):
we're using only one of 300 languages. So that's probably
not going to work. So I have suggested half in
joke in the book that we should start calling ourselves Balanda.
I don't really expect people to take it on, but
you never know. I might have, you know, push, push
the stone and it might start rolling down the hill.
It's I think we do need a name for ourselves
(44:56):
that says we are not just the default from which
everybody else is an aberration.
S3 (45:02):
What's the response been to the book? Are people sharing
their own? You're starting to do festivals. You're talking about it.
Are people sharing any of their own personal stories and
histories with you?
S4 (45:13):
Yes it is. And actually, the first cab off the rank.
I got a series of about 4 or 5 letters
from New Zealand, all starting Kia ora. And, you know,
using the Maori language quite extensively. In fact, one of
them is in one of them is from someone who's
written a book that's also called unsettled. And he's about
to send me a copy. So enormous interest from across
(45:37):
the Tasman, but also enormous interest here from people embarked
on the same journey. I mean, I always feel as
a writer that if I'm interested in something, I'm just
an ordinary person. There's nothing particularly special or I'm not
an unacknowledged acknowledged legislator, as Shelley thought poets were nothing
as grand as that. If I'm interested in something or
(45:59):
troubled by it, if I have a question about it.
Good chance that a lot of other people will too.
So yes, I'm getting a lot of readers mail, and
if any of you have written those letters, I apologize
for taking so long to get back to it, but
it is a fairly overwhelming actually, the amount of very
positive so far. Response.
S3 (46:18):
Well, Kate may not have got back to you with
her letter, a written response, but we now have the opportunity.
You now have the opportunity to ask her some questions.
So we're going to go to questions from the audience.
And Kate will happily. And we've got some questions that
have already been submitted as well, which we might start
with actually. So this is from Inner Tea. When is
(46:42):
that point when you say to yourself, okay, I have
enough material in my mind to write another book. How
do you know it's enough for a book? It seems
like I've never started because there is no whole idea
in my mind.
S4 (46:55):
Ah, well, you're one of my lot because I never
have a whole idea in my mind when I start
the book either. Um, I just plunge in. I've heard
Thomas Keneally say the same thing. You just have to
plunge in. I mean, one of the one of the
difficulties of writing. I taught writing for many years, and
the hardest thing about it was to unteach people what
(47:16):
they had learned at school, which is that you have
to know it all laid out in advance. You've got
to do your plan. You've got to have your fabulous
opening sentence and your, you know, all that stuff, all
the beginning.
S3 (47:27):
Middle and end.
S4 (47:28):
Especially that. Yes. And you know, if you do most
creative writing classes, they talk about, you know, the narrative
arc and all that. So there's a whole lot of
formulas which are very daunting. And a friend and I,
Sue Wolfe, both felt that we must be doing it
wrong because we just kind of plunged in and, and
just started and let the material take us where we are.
(47:51):
Where it seemed to lead. And we went around and
interviewed a whole lot of terrific writers like Tom Keneally
and Peter Carey about how they did it. And to
our astonishment, they all said they did it that way too.
So don't wait. Just plunge in. The thing is, to
pick the bit that you think, oh, when I get
to that bit, I'll really enjoy writing that. Just start
with that bit. Think of it as like a movie
(48:13):
which is never shot in the order in which you
see it. It's just shot in random order and you
put it together later. So don't feel you have to
know it in advance.
S3 (48:23):
And another question from Rachel Carey. How do you overcome
any fears of writing vulnerably?
S4 (48:29):
Yeah, that's a good question. Um, this is probably the
most exposing. I had all kinds of nightmares before I
sent it to the publishers. And they were bad dreams
about exposure, you know? Um, I suppose in this case,
the the subject is important enough to me. And perhaps
(48:53):
also there's something about being my age and thinking, if
not now, when? Um. I have circled this all my life.
Ever since mum told me those stories as a child.
I've circled it. And, um. What does it matter if
people see what a deal I am? You know, that's
(49:15):
who I am. So, you know, um, they can hate
me or despise me if they like. But I think
perhaps the subject has to feel important enough for that.
And also some sense of putting your ego aside. Look,
I don't know, I find with every book that if
(49:36):
you ask me in about a year's time, I'll be
much clearer as to what I, what I actually did.
But I'm still processing it, I think.
S3 (49:44):
As someone who reads a lot of books for my job,
I think that some of the best writing comes from vulnerability.
The most potent writing?
S4 (49:54):
Yes. Um, look, I think the impetus has to come
from vulnerability, but it doesn't necessarily have to be on
the page. Um.
S3 (50:04):
A willingness to kind of put yourself out there, to
expose yourself to criticism, to scrutiny. I mean, any I
suppose anyone, any artist has to come to terms with that,
whether you're a visual artist, a performer on stage. I mean,
that is a great thing, isn't it? That's why we well,
we should admire artists.
S4 (50:23):
Yeah. Look, you're absolutely right. Um, and I think that's because, actually,
artists are driven. Like, we don't kind of have a
choice about it. So no matter, no matter where we
think it will take us. And that can be a
very bad place. Artists of all genres. Um, it's like,
you know, we simply have to do it. Our lives.
We know we're not being our complete selves if we're not.
(50:47):
It is a kind of compulsion, possibly a pathological one.
S3 (50:51):
We can take some questions from the audience now, and
there will be a microphone. Oh, we can see you.
Thank you.
S5 (50:59):
Um, my name is Jenny. And, um, your story is
my story as a sixth generation descendant of convicts and
on the Hawkesbury. And so I know what they likely did, like, like, uh,
Solomon Wiseman. Um, my question to you is just your
thoughts on these ideas. One, the idea of the Uniting
(51:19):
Church of Australia calls non-Indigenous Australians Second peoples. So that's
something that and I don't think it's just the Uniting Church.
Other organisations too. And I find that sort of for myself,
a great way to express.
S4 (51:35):
You know, that's that's really good.
S5 (51:37):
Um, the other the other question I wanted to ask, um,
I felt you sort of stopped when you got to
talking about the land, you know, that was taken and
stolen and that, yes, we weren't directly the settlers. Um,
but many of the Aboriginal academics would say that colonization
just continues because we have incredible economic privilege, white privilege,
(52:02):
so many other privileges based on that, we are on
stolen land as we stand right here, and that the
economy and everything, the sort of so-called progress of Australia
has come from that. So I just wondered about your
thoughts about that.
S4 (52:17):
Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. We are the beneficiaries of that.
And it is a zero sum game. Or maybe it
needn't be, but it has turned out that way. Installing,
stealing the land and benefiting so hugely. We have hugely
disadvantaged the people from whom we've stolen it, and that
it doesn't actually have to be that way. It doesn't
(52:40):
have to be a zero sum game. It is actually
about sharing. I mean, the most basic family knowledge that
children grow up with is to share. I'm the grandparent
of two little kids, and teaching to share is really difficult.
Kids really have to know how to learn how to
do it, be taught how to do it. And so, um,
(53:01):
when we look at that Aboriginal disadvantage and, uh, forget
that it comes from what we did, you know, it's
very easy to look at it in a judgmental kind
of way. Um, but if you had been, if you
had had your culture so catastrophically destroyed and, um, sort of, um,
(53:26):
you know, denigrated, had your children stolen as well as
your land, uh, your language, all of that. Um, you know,
that is damage that will take a lot of, uh, overcoming.
And it is our Our responsibility to take that on.
Thank you for making that point. Okay.
S6 (53:47):
Can you explain what you mean by the title?
S4 (53:51):
Ah, good question. The title. The question is what I
meant by the title. It seemed I'm not. The first
person to have used have used has exploited the ambiguities
of the word. So I have felt unsettled about having
the white privilege that I do ever since I. Well, look,
ever since my mother, when we were children, we often
(54:11):
went to picnics in the bush, and my mother would
unfailingly look around and say, this must have been Paradise
for the Aboriginal people. And I think that might actually
be the beginning of the unsettledness the uneasiness. So that's
one part of it. But of course, the other side
of the coin is that we have unsettled the people
who are here. So it's a it's a very rich word.
(54:32):
And that's why I have followed many other people in
using it. But I hope that it indicated that I
didn't have answers about any of it. The situation is
so unsettled and unsettling that it's not a matter of
a simple set of answers for any of us. Thank you.
S7 (54:52):
Kate. My name is Julianne. I'm just wondering if it's
easier for people who haven't got your background, who are
first generation to. Want to do something about their situation
(55:12):
but don't have the guilt?
S4 (55:16):
Yes. I think if you had arrived, I was hard
to imagine if you knew your family had arrived last week. Look,
when I was handing out for the yes thing for
the referendum, I happened to be doing it in a
place with a lot of newly arrived Australians in the
north of Melbourne. And what struck me was that they
were people of very goodwill. But not only did they
(55:39):
not understand what referendums were, or constitution or any of that,
the notion of a country that had a set of
people still alive and still extant, from whom the land
had quite recently been stolen, was not something that someone
from Albania or Poland actually had any kind of, uh,
there was no correlative in their world that they could
(56:02):
make sense of it. Yes. So if you're the lady
is saying that if the children of a migrant, you
might have a sense of recognition and acknowledgement and want
to do something, but you don't have that kind of
personal thing. And I think that is absolutely right. Um, in,
(56:23):
in a way, I feel privileged to have that background
because it gives me that, that sort of heart understanding
of exactly what I've done to stand on the actual
bit of land that your actual blood relative stole, you
cannot evade it. It becomes very personal. Whereas for more
(56:44):
newly arrived people, it's an act of great generosity for
them to kind of make that leap of imagination.
S3 (56:50):
Kate, thank you. Thank you so much for this rich discussion,
and I'm sure everyone will feel possibly a little bit
more willing to contemplate some of some of the themes,
if not to do it for their own family. But
I think just in reading your book to think about this.
It's been wonderful. Thank you.
S4 (57:10):
Thank you Rosemary, that was wonderful. And thank you.
S1 (57:26):
Thank you for listening to Kate Grenville Unsettled, a special
broadcast from the Melbourne Writers Festival 2025, in partnership with
Vision Australia Library. Kate Grenville's book, Unsettled A Journey Through
Time and Place, is available in Daisy audio through Vision
Australia Library, and you can find more information about the
wonderful services and content available through Vision Australia Library by
(57:46):
heading to Vision Australia Library or calling 1300Â 654Â 656. That's 1300Â 654Â 656.
If you'd like to share this program with someone, it's
available via podcast. All you need to do is search
for interview highlights from Vision Australia Radio wherever you get
(58:07):
your podcasts. Thank you for listening to this special broadcast
presented by Vision Australia Library and Melbourne Writers Festival here
on Vision Australia Radio, VA radio, digital and online at
VA radio Dot.
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