Gillian Dooley and Danielle Clode
A discussion on The First Wave: Exploring early coastal contact history in Australia
The First Wave (Wakefield Press 2019) presents a range of thought provoking contributions on the assumptions and presuppositions the first European maritime explorers brought to the discovery of Australia and to encounters with the indigenous peoples. Mutual misunderstanding was almost universal, whether it resulted in violence or in apparently friendly transactions. Perspectives considered include Indigenous cosmologies, European history of ideas, representations in art and literature, the role of animals, food and fire in mediating encounters, and Indigenous agency in exploration and shipwrecks.
The collection approaches the subject through both research and creative work, including poetry by Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal poet Ali Cobby Eckermann, fiction by Miles Franklin award-winning Noongar author Kim Scott, and an account of the arrival of Christian missionaries in the Torres Strait Islands by Torres Strait elder statesman George Mye.
Watch the video
Danielle Clode and Gillian Dooley discuss this anthology of essays and creative works, and share contributions from authors Molly Murn, Lisa Chandler and Aaron Corn.
Gillian Dooley co-edited for publication Matthew Flinders's Private Journal (2005). In 2014, she was invited to give the Royal Society of Victoria Matthew Flinders Memorial Lecture and in September 2017 she gave a lecture on Flinders and Sir Joseph Banks at the Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Danielle Clode’s publications include Killers in Eden (2002), later made into a TV documentary, which documented the importance of Indigenous culture in the development of the unique hunting collaboration between the Twofold Bay killer whales and whalers. In 2007, Voyages to the South Seas, on French Pacific exploration, was awarded the Victorian Premier's Award for Nonfiction.
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