AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
‘A fire hydrant on a street corner in Carlton, in inner-city Melbourne, carries an ephemeral stencilled graffito : ‘terror nullius.’ The graffito is a pun on the legal doctrine of terra nullius, Latin for ‘nobody’s land,’ which dictated that any territory found by a colonizing power could be occupied and claimed if it was deemed not to be inhabited by prior occupants. Typically it was deployed by the British, for example, in a number of rulings in the mid- to late – nineteenth century, (Reynolds, 'Frontier History' 4) to legitimize their colonial conquests around the so-called New World, in particular in Australia. Its hegemony as a legal fiction was ended by the Australian High Court’s historic Mabo ruling of 1992, which deemed that so-called native title, that is, Indigenous possession of Australia, had existed before and after British occupation and the declaration of sovereignty in 1788 (Butt, Eagleson, and Lane).’ (Introduction)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- The White Woman 1994 single work novel
- The Secret River 2005 single work novel
- Seven Versions of an Australian Badland 2002 single work prose
- Remembering Babylon 1993 single work novel
- That Deadman Dance 2010 single work novel
- The White Earth 2004 single work novel
- Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World 1983 single work novel