It was hot. A sudden stillness was in the late afternoon air. The waterhole's surface shone with unnatural smoothness. Fresh pig tracks at it's edge told of pigs just gone. Two bubbles popped up, their spreading ripples fracturing the tree and sky reflections; just decaying vegetation, said my mind. I should have known better, I should have smelt crocodile!! What is it about the Northern Territory that fascinates? I have only to mention it's name in conversation and people stop and turn to listen. Why, for 190 years, has it drawn people from all over to come, stay longer than they imagined and, often, never leave? This book is a memoir of a family's life in a remote aboriginal community, in Australia's Northern Territory, something the equivalent of remote Canada or Alaska, where few people go. For half a century it was our home - this place called Oenpelli, (now Gunbalanya) at the very top of Australia, place of dark skinned people, crocodiles, buffalo and much more, a place where we built our lives. It tells of changing world as a missionary family and an aboriginal community become part of modern Australia This our family's story, growing amongst the people, animals and places and colours of this this strange land, alongside an aboriginal community going through its own changes; citizenship, alcohol, uranium mining, land rights, outstation development, and community self management. It is a memoir of living in one of the most isolated parts of Australia - a small aboriginal missionary community in the Northern Territory, something the equivalent of the remote Canada or Alaska. It is the landscape featured in the tourist brochures for Kakadu and the movie Crocodile Dundee. It is a chronicle of change in the last half century with land rights and aboriginal self determination at the centre of which are my mother and father with Christian beliefs which motivated their contribution to this change. It is a story of memories and love for this remote and beautiful place, in which I lived as a child then worked as an adult. It also a story of many NT people who gave me my memories and of many other parts of the NT each with their distinctive character and their hardy, outlandish characters who stories live on in my mind and words. It also tells of my own experience of surviving attack by a large crocodile in a remote swamp This memoir provides the foundation for my novels in the Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series. The places in these books are the places in which I lived and worked and many of the stories came little changed from people I knew. In particular my experience in surviving a crocodile attack of a large saltwater crocodile, which mauled my leg as told in this book forms part of the central role of the crocodile as a predator in this novel series. The role of my father in opening road transport including building a crossing of the East Alligator River, developing outstations for aboriginal communities, learning to fly on missionary wages and establishing an aviation service along with assisting the aboriginal peoples of this land to gain royalties from mining is a story that deserves to be told as a major part of NT history. Along with his tireless work the contribution of many others is also an essential part of the story.
About the Author: Graham Wilson lives in Sydney Australia. He has completed and published nine books. They comprise two series, 1. The Old Balmain House Series 2. The Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series along with a family memoir. Children of Arnhem's Kaleidoscope The first series starts with The Old Balmain House, based on a cottage in Sydney where a photo was discovered of a small girl who died 100 years ago. It imagines her life based in an early inner Sydney suburb. The second novel in this series, Lizzie's Tale is the story of a working class teenage girl who lives in this same house in the 1950s. When she becomes pregnant she is determined not to surrender her baby for adoption, and struggles to survive in this unforgiving society. The third novel in this series, Devil's Choice, is the story of Lizzie's daughter who is faced with the awful choice of whether to seek the help of one of her mother's rapists' to try to save the life of her own daughter who is inflicted with an incurable disease. The Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series comprises five novels based in Outback Australia. The first novel tells the story of an English backpacker, Susan, who becomes captivated and in great danger from a man who loves crocodiles. The second book in the series, Crocodile Man, follows the discovery of this man's remains and his diary and Susan, being placed on trial for murder. The third book, The Empty Place, is about her struggle to retain sanity in jail while her family and friends try to find out what really happened that fateful day. In Lost Girls Susan vanishes. It is the story of the search for her and four other lost girls whose passports were found in the possession of the man she killed. The final book, Sunlit Shadow Dance, is of a girl who appears in a remote aboriginal community in North Queensland, without memory except for a name.She rebuilds her life from an empty shell but, as fragments of the past return, dark shadows come that threaten to overwhelm her. Arnhem Lands's Children, is about the author's life in the Northern Territory. It tells of his childhood in an aboriginal community in remote Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory, one of its last frontiers. It tells of the people, danger and beauty of this place, and of its transformation over the last half century with the coming of aboriginal rights and the discovery or uranium. It also tells of his surviving an attack by a large crocodile and of his work over two decades in the outback of the NT.