by Melissa Lucashenko
Two stories, set 170 years apart on the same Country. In the 1850s, in the raw colony of Brisbane (briefly and half-seriously called “Edenglassie”), a young Yugambeh saltwater man, Mulanyin, comes north to work, falls in love with a Yagara woman, Nita, and is caught between building a life and answering the call of a homeland under attack. In 2024, ninety-something Granny Eddie Blanket takes a fall on a city footpath and, from her hospital bed, tells a white journalist the true history of the place — while her fierce activist granddaughter Winona spars with, and falls for, a disconnected young doctor, Johnny.
Lucashenko does for south-east Queensland what earlier First Nations novels have done elsewhere: retells the founding of a city from an Aboriginal point of view, with clear eyes about the dispossession and killing involved, and with her trademark humour and heat. The two timelines rhyme: the same families, the same land, the same fight for survival — and Goorie wit and knowledge carried unbroken across it.
The 1850s strand shows the colony while Aboriginal people still outnumber the settlers — and then the turn, as land is taken, resistance is crushed and leaders are executed. The novel names this plainly as invasion.
Where to look: the settlement scenes; the frontier violence; the public hanging of a resistance leader.
The two timelines are the argument: the same families are still here, still on Country, still holding language and knowledge. Colonisation tried to end them and did not.
Where to look: the links between Mulanyin's people and Eddie's; Winona's activism and tours; Goorie humour as endurance.
Granny Eddie insists the “whitefella-concocted history” is wrong and that she carries the true account from the Old People. The novel dramatises the struggle over the record.
Where to look: Eddie and the journalist; the contrast between monuments/street names and lived memory; the title.
Mulanyin and Nita in the past; Winona and Johnny in the present. Love is tender and also political — it runs up against duty to Country, against family, and against the damage colonisation has done.
Where to look: the courtship scenes in both eras; Mulanyin's divided loyalties; Johnny's journey back toward culture.
Identity here is kin and place, not the individual. Decisions are weighed against obligation to family and to the land that made you.
Where to look: Mulanyin's pull home to the Nerang; Eddie's authority as an elder; Winona's guiding of others onto Country.
The casual violence and paternalism of the colony are mirrored by the everyday racism of “progressive” modern Brisbane — in hospitals, media and public honours.
Where to look: settlers' language about “the blacks”; how Eddie is treated in hospital and at the event where she falls; Winona's exchanges with Johnny.
Two love stories, 170 years apart, on one piece of Country — and the same families holding on through both.
How the two timelines work together
Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie writer of Bundjalung and European heritage, from the Bundjalung/Yugambeh region of northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland. Her earlier novel Too Much Lip won the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. She writes with anger, comedy and deep local knowledge.
“Edenglassie”, a mash-up of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was one name floated for the new settlement on the Brisbane River. The Aboriginal names for the place are Meanjin / Magandjin. The novel's title holds the colonial name up for inspection.
The novel is set between the end of convict transportation and Queensland becoming a separate colony in 1859 — a moment of fragile coexistence tipping into frontier war. Real history in the background includes the Petrie family (settlers raised among Aboriginal people, and befrienders of Mulanyin in the novel) and the public hanging of Dundalli — a Dalla man of the Dalambara clan, adopted by the Djindubari of Bribie Island — outside Brisbane's gaol on Queen Street on 5 January 1855, the colony's last public execution.
The present strand is set against a city preparing to celebrate itself (monuments, anniversaries, an Olympics on the horizon) while Aboriginal Brisbane keeps telling a different story of the same streets.
Widely awarded: the $100,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize, the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance, the Colin Roderick Award and the Nib Literary Award (all 2024), and longlisted for the Miles Franklin. Praised for making pre-colonial and early-colonial Brisbane vivid and specific.
A saltwater man from the south, working in Brisbane and saving to take Nita home. Torn between the future he wants and his obligation to a homeland under attack.
Works in a settler household; sharp, warm, and clear about the risks of the world they are trying to build a life in.
In her nineties; falls on a city footpath and spends the novel in hospital, telling a journalist the real history and holding her family together from bed.
An activist and cultural guide, quick-tongued and uncompromising. Her romance with Johnny is also a debate about culture and belonging.
Recently discovered Aboriginal ancestry through a DNA test and has no community or cultural upbringing to go with it — a “DNA-tested newcomer” the novel uses to probe what does and doesn't make someone Aboriginal. Drawn to Winona and, through her, toward Country.
Historical and invented settlers, some sympathetic, all part of a system taking the land. The novel is generous to individuals and unsparing about the project.
Chapters alternate between 1850s and 2024. Watch for the echoes (names, places, situations) that tie the two eras into one continuous story.
Eddie trips on a tree root outside a civic event and is hospitalised. The accident sets up the whole present-day strand — and her decision to talk.
The young man's first sight of the settlement, where his people still outnumber the newcomers and the outcome is not yet decided.
The courtship, and the plan to marry and go south. Ordinary hope, built on ground that is about to shift.
Eddie corrects the “whitefella-concocted history”, insisting the true account comes from the Old People, not the archive.
Their arguments about identity, connection and responsibility carry the novel's present-day thinking — and its comedy.
Colonial violence escalates; the fragile peace breaks; Mulanyin's loyalties are forced into the open.
Mulanyin witnesses the public execution of the resistance leader Dundalli outside the Brisbane gaol — a real historical event, staged by the colony as spectacle and warning.
From her hospital bed, Granny Eddie sets out to correct the record: the real history of this Country comes from the Old People, not the archive.
The 2024 strand's central move
Lucashenko's dialogue and her Goorie humour do a lot of the thematic work. Where this guide has a confirmed line it's given in full; the rest is a finding map — a marker plus where it sits — so you can pull the exact wording as you read.
Eddie tells the journalist that the “whitefella-concocted history” of the land is wrong, and that she carries the true account from the Old People.2024 — the hospital interview
the framing of 1850s Brisbane as “Edenglassie” — the settlers' hopeful name laid over Meanjin/Magandjin.1850s strand — early
Eddie on being made a “living treasure” / oldest Aboriginal woman — celebrated and not listened to.2024 — the media attention
Winona researching Country and native title — history as a live legal and moral claim, not the past.2024 strand
settlers' language about Aboriginal people — “blacks”, “natives”, the vocabulary of removal.1850s strand — throughout
the Native Police and the frontier killings referred to at the edges of the settler scenes.1850s strand
Dundalli's public hanging outside the Brisbane gaol — colonial “justice” staged as spectacle.1850s strand — late, 5 January 1855
Mulanyin watching the town grow over known places — camps, fords and paths built over.1850s strand
2024 echoes — policing, the hospital, development on Country — the same structures in modern dress.2024 strand
“You're thinking like a whitefella when ya close him out. That's not our way. We bring people in, we bring our Mob home, and we care about em. We teach em how to behave proper way.”Granny Eddie, on family and belonging — 2024 strand
the family line running unbroken from the 1850s strand to Eddie and Winona — the structural reveal that ties the two timelines together.both timelines
language kept alive — Yugambeh / Yagara words carried in dialogue and thought.both timelines
Winona's activism as this generation's form of the older resistance.2024 strand
“He's happy now,” she whispered to Johnny. “But what about when he gets to Nerang? When he sees what they've done to his country?”Nita, watching Mulanyin greet the islands from the masthead — 1850s strand
“An odd sensation started up in Mulanyin's gut, a whirlpool of anguish and confusion spinning just below his navel. An unravelling.”Narration, on Mulanyin's divided loyalties — 1850s strand
his duty to return south set against his hope of a life with Nita.1850s strand
the wedding plan and how the colony's violence overtakes the couple's future.1850s strand — late
Winona's lines about culture, land and being Goorie now — and her jabs at Johnny, in what one reviewer called “some of the best banter” in the book.2024 strand
Johnny's DNA-test discovery of Aboriginal ancestry, and the novel's running question of whether that alone makes him Aboriginal.2024 strand
the hospital as contested ground — care, control and family all at once.2024 strand
humour as method — where a joke lands a hard truth the characters can't say plainly.both timelines
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