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'Mention Palm Island to many Australians and they will conjure images of tropical resorts in the Caribbean, the Grenadines or Dubai. Most non-Indigenous Australians know little of Palm’s history as a penal settlement for Aboriginal people, established by the Queensland Government a century ago. Some may vaguely recall television images from 2004 of smoke billowing from the roof of the police station on an island in North Queensland; others the shock headlines ‘Tropic of Despair’, ‘Paradise Lost’ or ‘Queensland hell hole’ that thrust Australia’s... ' (Introduction)
Notes
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Epigraph:
Where Aboriginal people are concerned, the twin strands of dysfunction
and idealisation weave a highly coloured thread through the fabric of
Australian culture. The strand that remains all but invisible is that of
ordinary Aboriginal lives, the preoccupations and pleasures that amidst
all the furore and sentiment remain robust and sustaining.Kim Mahood, ‘Listening is harder than you think’,
Griffith Review 19: Re-imagining Australia
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Palm Island, Ingham area, Ingham - Cairns area, Queensland,
