Coonardoo is the moving story of a young Aboriginal woman trained form childhood to be the housekeeper at Wytaliba station and, as such, destined to look after its owner, Hugh Watt. The love between Coonardoo and Hugh, which so shocked its readers when the book was first published in 1929, is never acknowledged and so, degraded and twisted in on itself, destroys not only Coonardoo, but also a community that was once peaceful.
Daring for its time, this tough, uncompromising novel still raises difficult questions about the history of contact between blacks and whites, and its representation in Australian writing.
