Fighting for Justice

The Donald Thomson Story

Robert Macklin

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English

Hardie Grant Books
30 July 2024

Biography: general; Biography: science, technology & engineering; Anthropology; Birds (ornithology); Biography - Australian

Donald Thomson at 10 years old was a lone figure in Melbourne’s Bayside with its billabongs and creeks meandering to the sea. In his ‘Naturalist’s Diary’, he recorded his collection of wildflowers to wattles, seabirds to tiny blue wrens, mammals to reptiles to fish and to insects of every shape and hue. By 16 he was part-time editor of a national nature magazine.

At 28, as Australia’s first home-grown anthropologist, he met the only people who truly shared his worldview: the First Nations of northern and central Australia. He wrote, ‘We learned much about their language, social life, and customs, and of their elaborate rituals and tabus…and we grew to love these people.’

It was this love for a world threatened with extinction that drove Donald Thomson for the rest of his life, fighting for justice through a threated invasion and the reality of a hostile and unrepentant occupation.

By: Robert Macklin
Imprint: Hardie Grant Books
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781761450853
ISBN 10: 1761450859
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 30 July 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Robert Macklin is the prize-winning author of 25 non-fiction works – mostly of Australian history - and four novels. His biographies of prominent Australians range from Albert Jacka VC to Hamilton Hume, the great journalist, G.E. Morrison and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. His portrait of BHP, The Big Fella, with Peter Thompson won the $30,000 Blake Dawson prize for Business Literature and his histories of Norfolk Island and the early years of colonial Australia received four best book awards from the Canberra Critics Circle. Born in Queensland and educated at the University of Queensland and the ANU, he has lectured on Australia literature at three Chinese Universities in Shanghai and Sian. His best-selling Castaway (Hachette 2019) drew on Donald Thomson’s research of the Aboriginal people of North Queensland and is optioned for a TV series.