The founding of white Australia.
A settlement for convicts, making it the biggest prison in the world.
The story of Australia's white settlement. It empties the vacuum cleaner with which modern Australians are at last cleaning under the carpet where for generations, the dust of truth was swept.
From his first days at Sydney Cove, Adam lives the shame of a nation's founding.
It is the first account of life for Australian convicts told through convict eyes, since Marcus Clarke's 'For the Term of His Natural Life' published in 1870.
The Aborigine too, finds his securities shattered, faced with the terrible realisation that his heritage is crumbling.
Excerpt
The world isn't a bad place, it's the people, or some of the people who sully it for the rest.
Those who praise God's mercy while wreaking suffering and torment on his children are the turds, the bigots, hypocrites, self-righteous do-gooders who play the saviours of mankind yet who are blind.
"Save the sinners by torturing their bodies and souls."
There is no redemption, no hope the oppressed can reach them, open their eyes, render them aware. The very power they amass has captured their minds, twisted their reasoning, blackened their souls. They've blinded themselves in arrogance and I weep at their want of perception, of fellowship. Their only instinct is retribution, the more violent and brutal the more just. Flagellation and humbling are the more regenerative. They are sick in the soul. Malice beats in their hearts and venom courses in their veins.
Professional Reviews
Flight of the Gurrewa
5++ Stars!
I wept for Adam Ashby. Not because he lived such a degrading despairing life as a lowly convict, but because he had finally discovered acceptance and respect by the Aborigines of New South Wales...only to be shot down by his own people. He had bolted into the wilds rather than be flogged for his latest crime. This is a poignant story of a boy who in his teens searched for a kind and gentler world where a person could be loved for simply being himself. Instead, he is jailed and thrown in with hardened criminals and military men who greedily seek power over their charges. In spite of what this criminal environment has in store for Adam, he nonetheless survives. Yet, it is his searching for empathetic love and respect that carries him into manhood.
And, oh that ending! It hit me right in the gut! Masterful stuff!
...JoEllen, Conger Book Reviews, USA
Flight of the Gurrewa
An engrossing read! A dark tale of what we must admit is not humanity's finest hour.
Author Kev Richardson has caught the flavour and pure awfulness of the time about which he writes. His characters are well drawn and believable and seem bent on self destruction, the only way of life they know.
Without hesitation, I recommend this story to anyone who likes historical or mainstream tales.
...Anne K. Edwards, eBook Reviews Weekly
