AustLit

'The story of one of Australia's worst mass murders, and the nation's unsung civil rights hero

'‘A deeply moving account of a massacre that is a stain on our nation’s soul – and the prosecutor who brought the perpetrators to justice’. Peter FitzSimons

'In 1838, eleven convicts and former convicts were put on trial for the brutal murder of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children at Myall Creek in New South Wales. The trial created an enormous amount of controversy because it was almost unknown for Europeans to be charged with the murder of Aborigines. It would become the most serious trial of mass murder in Australia’s history.

'The trial’s prosecutor was the Attorney General of New South Wales, John Hubert Plunkett. It proved to be Plunkett’s greatest test, as it pitted his forensic brilliance and his belief in equality before the law against the combined forces of the free settlers, the squatters, the military, the emancipists, most of the newspapers, and even the convict population. He fought valiantly to punish those responsible for one of the worst known atrocities against the Aboriginal inhabitants of early Australia.

'From the author of Kidnapped and Eugenia, Murder at Myall Creek follows the journey of the man who arguably achieved more for modern-day civil rights in Australia than anyone else before or since.' (Publication summary)

'On July 5, 1920 Harry Crawford was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife Annie Birkett, whose body had been found off Mowbray Road in Lane Cove, Sydney.

'But Harry was not, in fact, Harry. He was Eugenia Falleni, a woman who had lived as a man in Australia for 22 years.

'In Eugenia, renowned barrister and Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi explores the story of one of the most extraordinary criminal trials in Australia's legal history.

'Capturing what life was really like in Eugenia's times, Tedeschi reveals how the full weight of the law and public opinion came crashing down on her, branding her a complete outcast and a serious menace to the moral fabric of society.

'From escaping her misunderstood childhood to her transition to living as a man, her marriages and her eventual trial for murder, this is the gritty and truly gripping story of one of Australia's most misunderstood accused persons. (Publisher's blurb)