Surveying the Wild Abyss, by Aboriginal historian Barry Corr, is a history of colonial invasion of the Nepean–Hawkesbury rivers (“Dhurabang”) and the Sydney Plain they enclose.

Part one, just over half of the book, covers this. Then Corr turns his attention to Australian historical consciousness – what he refers to as “settler memory” and the “settler narrative”.

In the second part, he points to resonance between the “settler narrative” and other texts. These are as far-flung as Gilgamesh, the poetry of Alexander Pope and John Milton, Charles Darwin (a visitor to the Dhurabang region in 1836) and Joseph Conrad (just a few of the writers he quotes). His mode is not historical, but intertextual.

Review: Surveying the Wild Abyss: Unravelling settler memory by Barry Corr (New South)

In a third section, Corr shares the writings that shaped him as a critic of Australia’s historical consciousness. What he calls “my tinker’s bag” contains quotes from philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida, psychoanalytic theorists Sigmund Freud and Jacqueline Rose, philosopher-historians Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault, and anthropologist William Stanner.

The second half of the book is thus a blizzard of quotations, an autodidact’s exuberant display.

‘Impossible’ that Aboriginal anger will cool

In part one’s historical narrative, Corr foreshadows part two’s critique of Australia’s colonial record. His account of the Parramatta Native Institution – where authorities attempted to school 37 Aboriginal children between 1814 and 1820 – includes this:

The taking of children continued unabated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even in this century, although the devastating effects of the Stolen Generation are supposedly well known, and despite the Apology, the taking of children has been reinstitutionalised and touted as a social necessity, despite every indicator to the contrary.

The taking of children continued unabated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even in this century, although the devastating effects of the Stolen Generation are supposedly well known, and despite the Apology, the taking of children has been reinstitutionalised and touted as a social necessity, despite every indicator to the contrary.

In passages such as this, Corr points to what he sees as the relentless continuities in Australians’ policies and historical consciousness. He portrays Australian thought and action as immune to historical revision – and not blessed by significant policy rethinking.

“The stumbling block for decolonisation is the inability and unwillingness of the beneficiaries of settlement to recognise, acknowledge and address the nature and consequences of settlement,” he writes.

In holding to this conviction, Corr is........

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