This paper examines 'some of the ways in which white women novelists also contributed powerfully to shaping the literary imaginative landscape through which Australian readers came to "know" Indigenous people, and the nature of inter-racial contact, in the period before the publication of writing by Indigenous women began to disrupt the textual terrain' (54). The focus is on the writing of women who grew up in rural Queensland and/or used Queensland as settings. The paper concludes that women writers, though presenting themselves as sympathetic and knowledgeable observers and spokespersons for Indigenous people, were 'active participants in the ongoing colonial projects of subjugating Indigenous people and managing perceptions of that process' (68).