An old friend lent me his copy of People of the River by the rigorous historian Grace Karskens. It's a beautifully written and thoroughly engaging account not only of Nepean/Hawkesbury river history but also of manifold family histories and their complex inter-relationships. Karskens personalises so many of her observations through family stories from both an Aboriginal perspective and the white settlers. It begins with what the river's ancient geology can tell us about Aboriginal occupation and deftly shifts into the complex consequences of European invasion.

Having recently read [b:Pemulwuy, The Rainbow Warrior|6323289|Pemulwuy, The Rainbow Warrior|Eric Willmot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361081906l/6323289._SX50_.jpg|6508759] by Eric Willmot, I question whether Grace Karskens adequately covers the extent of Aboriginal resistance to white settlement which, although mentioned, is largely omitted. If Eric Willmot is to be believed, then Pemulwuy and other warriors went very close to ridding NSW of the invaders in his 12-year war.

There are dimensions of this book that are part of my own family history. As a descendent (on my mother's side) of Colonial Secretary, Evan Nepean and his brother, Nicholas Nepean of the NSW Corps as well as (on my father's side) Governor Macquarie's ADC, Captain John Antill, our family is descended from what Grace Karskens calls the colonial elite. But we also have convict forebears. How fascinating and just that today the new elite are those who are descended from the dispossessed Aboriginal clans. Like many other Currency girls, my great-great grandmother, Selina (nee Antill) married at 16. Over 9 generations our family has developed intimate enchantments with different Australian places. My own enchantment with the Warrumbungles, in north-western N.S.W, is articulated in In Place .

Karskens delves into why the Currency generation should despise the new British settlers. A tension that continues to this day with entitled British migrants pontificating from a position of perceived superiority. However, for those who saw beauty...

At-homeness and a passionate attachment to this country were articulated still more clearly among the next generation, who identified strongly with their river birthplaces, families and communities, and called themselves Australians. p. 275

Nevertheless, the dispossession on which this new sense of belonging was based, extended to the prevailing notion that Aboriginal culture is/was somehow fixed and therefore doomed. The dynamism and flexibility of Indigenous culture is still largely ignored today, with many lamenting the loss of traditional cultural practices.

Aboriginal people continued their own cultural practices and movements within 'settled' areas for decades, a tenacious and practical form of resistance. But they also adopted and transformed some of the settler's pleasures and participated in others:..p.430

Just when I began to wonder if this book was becoming slightly plodding I found myself enthralled with the description of songs as connective events. In 1933, on the edge of Australia's western MacDonell Ranges, my father witnessed the last great pre-contact gathering of Nalliae, Pintubi and Loritcha groups. During a corroboree the Nalliae sang a song (among many others) referred to as the Duck Flying Away song. Not only was it rhythmically remarkable in that it was clear to all that it was about the flight of ducks as they circle a water hole, but it was sung in an old language no-one understood. My father speculated that it may have been a relic of a more sophisticated period. Karskens provides another explanation:

Songs also spread language far across Country, for when Aboriginal people learned the words, they learned the 'dialects of the language hence the poets sprung', although they could not always understand the meaning. p.441.

( )