Blood on the Wattle [Paperback]

Bruce Elder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1999

Documenting some of the most significant, albeit painful, events in white Australia's past, this work was first published to coincide with the Bicentenary in 1988. This revised and updated edition includes new information on three key events in Aboriginal-European relations which have come to light since publication of the first edition, and gives an overview of the "Stolen Generation" report. This work hs become widely used in teaching Aboriginal history at both secondary and tertiary levels.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: New Holland Publishers, Ltd.; Expanded edition (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1864364106
• ISBN-13: 978-1864364101
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #466,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A savage indictment, May 12, 2002

By 

Michael Knight (Adelaide Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood on the Wattle (Paperback)

This book was a savage indictment of the white settlement of Australia. The details of the massacres are so unrelenting as to render the reader numb with disbelief that such behaviour could be perpetrated by so-callled civilised man.

My only criticism of this treatise is that Mr Elder fails to accept that the very same reasons that made the Aboriginal people innocent also applied to the perpetrators of the massacres. A white person taught that to steal a loaf of bread could lead to 7 years transportation was unlikely to react well to an aboriginal group taking and slaughtering cattle for food. It was often a case of the brutalised doing the brutalising.

Mr Elder also brushes off the (admittedly extremely rare) massacres of whites by aboriginals as being basically "brought upon themselves" even in cases where he has no particular evidence (ie when the settlers had just arrived and were building their camp). Horrible reprisals on the parts of other whites does not reduce the horror of the original act.

Don't get me wrong. These really are minor complaints. Overall, this is a well written book and the inclusion of previously unrecorded massacres from aboriginal oral histories is an important addition to what would otherwise be a list of the stories that white Australia recorded, which were of course written mostly by the people who perpetrated and therefore were apologists for the original acts.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for any Australian, October 15, 1999

By 

Steve Hayes (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Wattle (Paperback)

When I was in high school I was shocked and inspired by "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". It took another 20 years to find the Australian equivalent.

I bought this during a recent trip home. The presentation is sparse, and much of the evidence is anecdotal, but the mass of evidence is overwhelming. Australians slaughtered the Aboriginals in defiance of ill conceived laws. Although the current generation didn't perpetrate the crimes, race relations in Australia continue to be haunted by the shadows of these events. Elder's introduction rams home that time doesn't negate these events.

Please read this.