Melissa Lucashenko

“This bloody bullshit about the forgotten white working class – if there’s any forgotten people in Australia, if there’s any battlers in Australia, it’s brown and black people.”

“Aboriginal lore is vast and it is inclusive. Bitterness comes from loss of culture and loss of lore. And we have lost those things to some degree. But if you actually understand the old culture then you understand that we are all in it together.”

“I am not writing to make people feel warm and comfortable. When my readers enter the world of my book I want them to feel like they can find a place to belong in my story. But it is not their story, and the language is familiar but it is not their language. It is a novel about belonging and it is a novel about difference, too.'”

“It is like having double vision. We see the world that white people see but we are also seeing a mythic landscape at the same time and an historic landscape. White people see Rotary parks and headlands, we see sacred sites.”