REACHING THROUGH TIME

The phone rang unexpectedly, late one night. 'Guess who our white ancestors were?' chuckled Uncle Gerry. 'They were slave traders! A couple of generations of slave traders!'


After this startling revelation, Shauna wanted to find out more. She discovered her ancestor Robert Bostock arrived in Sydney in 1815 after being convicted of slave trading in Africa, and his grandson Augustus John married Bundjalung woman One My. Battling restrictions on access to government archives, Shauna gradually pieced together her family's stories of dispossession and frontier violence; life on reserves under the harsh regime of the Aborigines Protection Board; a cricket match with Bradman; activism and arts in Redfern; and a surprising reconciliation.