In The Settlement, Jock Serong reimagines in urgent, compelling prose the ill-fated exploits of George Augustus Robinson at the settlement of Wybalennaâa venture whose blinkered, self-interested cruelty might stand for the colonial enterprise itself.
On the windswept point of an island at the edge of van Diemenâs Land, the Commandant huddles with a small force of white men and women.
He has gathered together, under varying degrees of coercion and duress, the last of the Tasmanians, or so he believes. His purpose is to save themâfrom a number of things, but most pressingly from the murderous intent of the pastoral settlers on their country.
The orphans Whelk and Pipi, fighting for their survival against the malevolent old man they know as the Catechist, watch as almost everything about this situation proves resistant to the Commandantâs will. The wind, the spread of disease, the strange black dog that floats in on the prow of a wrecked shipâŠ
But above all the Chief, the leader of the exiles, before whom the Commandant performs a perverse, intimate dance of violence and betrayal.
âAn extraordinarily vivid imagining of one of the most significant encounters in Australian history.â AMANDA LOHREY
âGrips from the first page. Itâs unsentimental, truthful and profound â all in a milieu effortlessly imagined.â DON WATSON
