Aboriginal Pathways

Book excerpt: The first European chroniclers of Indigenous Culture in Australia looked for the sensational, often neglecting its more significant features. In his fourth book on Queensland’s early history, J. G. Steele corrects this imbalance with a detailed account of the Indigenous people of the subtropical coast at the time of their earliest contact with white settlers. The region described is centred on Brisbane, extending along the coast to Fraser Island, to Evens Head in New South Wales, and inland to the Great Dividing Range. Drawing on early accounts, photographs, place-names, languages, legends, archeology, and museum collections, Aboriginal Pathways provides a wealth of fascinating and important material, much of it relevant to debates on Indigenous land rights and sacred sites of the 1980s.