AustLit

O'Conor examines and acknowledges the 1964 text The Legends of Moonie Jarl (Wilf Reeves) as a turning point in Australia's literary history and as a challenge to dominant colonial assumptions regarding Aboriginal culture. At a time when non-Indigenous representations of Aboriginality were privileged and presumed to be accurate, the twelve stories in this collection challenged the hegemonic view of the Indigenous population by 'defining the cultural significance of traditional Aboriginal culture' (134). In particular, O'Conor points to how the use of maps in the text works to 'invite readers across cultural boundaries' by using traditional symbols to develop the non-indigenous reader's understanding of Indigenous communities and as such, 'the story maps of The Legends of Moonie Jarl marked a new form of illustration in traditional narrative' (135). Her discussion focuses on how the text expands 'map reading' into the realm of cultural difference through its construction of a 'story map' that intergrates Indigenous and non-Indigenous signs and symbols.