Castaway

In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy, Narcisse Pelletier was abandoned by his shipmates on the Far North Queensland coast and would have perished if not for the local Aboriginal people of the Sandbeach country. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their world.

It was a time of the Frontier Wars and gradually the violent invasion of Queensland supported by the guns of the so-called Native Mounted Police made its way north from Brisbane towards the Sandbeach. Just before they arrived in 1875, his life was again turned upside down when he was forcibly ‘rescued’ by British sailors and returned to France.

Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures…a well-researched and very accessible history of the violent Queensland frontier…extraordinary and in many ways a tragic story, which Macklin has helped rescue from obscurity. – Henry Reynolds FAHA, FASSA

Publisher : Hachette Australia; 1st edition (25th June 2019)
Language : English
Paperback : 336 pages
ISBN: 9780733638497
ISBN-10: 073363849X