Unmaking Angas Downs: Myth and History on a Central Australian Pastoral Station by Shannyn Palmer

Book Description

Secondhand. Near fine condition.

Some stories dominate how we see and interpret a place, while others are obscured. Angas Downs is a pastoral station in Central Australia, but pastoralism is only a fraction of what has happened there. Like all places, it has accrued people and stories, in multiple layers, over time.

Listening to Tjuki Tjukanku Pumpjack and Sandra Armstrong, two Anangu with deep and abiding connections to Angas Downs, a very different kind of place emerges from that conjured in myths and histories of pioneers and pastoralists that have shaped understandings of the past in Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory.

Unmaking Angas Downs traces a history of colonisation in Central Australia by tracking the rise and demise of a rural enterprise across half a century and the complex and creative practices that transformed a cattle station into Country.

It grapples with how people experience profound dislocation and come to make a place for themselves in the wake of rupture. Angas Downs emerges as a place of dynamic interaction and social life, not only lived in, but also made by Anangu. (back cover)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers, please note that this book may contain descriptions and/or images of people who have passed away.