The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017
A local history of the Djadja Wurrung people of Central Victoria, looking at the relationship between the people of this Aboriginal nation, the British settlers who invaded their country, and men appointed by the imperial and the colonial governments to protect the Aboriginal people, as well as a relationship between the Djadja Wurrung and their indigenous neighbours. Attwood tells of the destruction, decimation, and dispossession of the Djadja Wurrung, using an unusually rich historical record. He ‘forgoes any reliance on historical concepts such as the frontier and resistance, to recover a good deal of the modus vivendi that the Djadja Wurrung reached with sympathetic protectors, pastoralists, and gold diggers, showing how they both adopted and adapted to these intruders and were thereby able to remain in their own country, at least for a time’. (blurb)
The book is reviewed for Honest History by Ben Wilkie. Other reviews: Australian Book Review (Amanda Nettelbeck); Daily Review (Rosemary Sorensen).
