34-37 Degrees South - 2023

Notes.
The Goanna Man and the Black Snake Woman feature in the story Bah’naga
and Mun’dah told by Auntie Frances Bodkin in the D’harawal Dreaming
Stories series. https://dharawalstories.com/
Captain Wallis led the troopers in the Appin massacre, which took place in
the vicinity of the Cataract Dam.
‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness?’. cf. T.S. Eliot, Gerontion.
Collected Poems: 1909-1962 (2020) Faber and Faber.
Most of the references in this section are to documented individuals. (The
exception is Fatima.) See Conversations with a survivor: John Grushka.
https://sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/shop/events/survivor-talk/survivor-inconversation-john-grushka/.
Mirjam K. from Monica G. Durrer’s Migrating
Identities Across Time and Space: Life Experiences of East German Migrants to
Australia. PhD thesis, UWA, 2016.
Blackbirds. Between 1863 and 1908, over 50,000 people from Pacific
Island countries were brought to Australia to work in primary industries
in Queensland and NSW. Some were kidnapped and forcibly removed;
many were persuaded to come by promises that were never fulfilled; most
were abused in one way or another; almost one-quarter died. This practice
was referred to as ‘blackbirding’, and the people conducting this trade as
‘blackbirders’.
‘Heidegger claimed Gerworfenheit must be Dasein’s ground.’ Heidegger’s
terms are notoriously difficult to pin down and translate, but Gerworfenheit
is usually translated as ‘thrownness’, meaning that ‘we did not choose that
into which we were sent, yet it forms, shapes, and influences our past,
present, and future’. Dasein is usually translated as Being.
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