Unmaking Angas Downs : myth and history on a Central Australian pastoral station /
Shannyn Palmer.
- Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, (c)2022.
- 1 online resource (xv, 272 pages, 16 unnumbered pages) : chiefly colour illustrations, map, portraits
Includes bibliographies and index.
Author's notes -- Prologue: Walara -- Introduction: Encounters in place -- Part 1 Exodus? / 2 The white experts -- 3 Walytja -- Part 2 Walara / 5 Founding entanglements -- 6 Found in translation -- Part 3 Bloodwood Bore / 8 The wind of change -- 9 A fortuitous location -- 10 Emerging economies and making place -- Part 4 Itineraries / 12 The itinerants -- 13 The walkabout leaders -- Part 5 Unmaking Angas Downs / 15 'There's nothing there now, but it's still our place' -- Epilogue: Palipmsest -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. 1 Whitefella food -- 4 Founding moments -- 7 Ration times -- 11 'We were always travelling' -- 14 Return --
A new work of history that seeks to unmake mythologies of pioneers, pastoralism and possession in the Northern Territory. Some stories dominate how we see and interpret a place, while others are obscured from view. Angas Downs is a pastoral station in Central Australia, but pastoralism is only a fraction of what has happened there. Like all places it has accrued people and stories, in multiple layers, over time. Listening to Tjuki Tjukanku Pumpjack and Sandra Armstrong, two An̲angu with deep and abiding connections to Angas Downs, a very different kind of place emerges from that conjured in myths and histories of pioneers and pastoralists that have shaped understandings of the past in Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory. Unmaking Angas Downs traces a history of colonisation in Central Australia by tracking the rise and demise of a rural enterprise across half a century, as well as the complex and creative practices that transformed a cattle station into Country. It grapples with the question of how people experience profound dislocation and come to make a place for themselves in the wake of rupture. Angas Downs emerges as a place of dynamic interaction and social life - not only lived in, but also made by An̲angu.
9780522878394
Aboriginal Australians--Social life and customs.--Australia--Northern Territory Ranches--Australia--Northern Territory.