FRASER ISLAND MASSACRE

Mr. Paul Dillon, a Sunshine Coast author of several books on Queensland history has written another straight-talking, straight-shooting book about the Wide Bay frontier during colonial times: Fraser Island Massacre Vrai ou Faux.

Captain Cook called it the Great Sandy Island; the locals called it Fraser Island; now the Queensland Labor government calls it K'gari. It's the place to be when you need a secluded, tranquil haven set among hundred year- old gum trees, palms, ferns, exotic plants, and mysterious lakes and waterways. It's the place to be if you want to catch a fish or two, or see a dingo in the raw.

A group has arisen that claim to be the long-lost tribes and clans of Fraser Island. To that end, they have persuaded the Queensland Labor government to acknowledge their existence and in turn their heredity rights. Accordingly, the Queensland Labor government consented to a grant of native title known as QCD2014/015 - Butchulla People #2 over Fraser Island and recently re-named the area as K'gari.

In making that claim the clans have felt it necessary to impeach and defame the forbearers and pioneers of another group of citizens. Whether it was necessary to adopt that approach is another matter. However, in doing so it extended to the offended party the right to at least examine the material put forward by the claimants.

But massacre there was none. This book by Paul Dillon is a forensic audit of the modern-day propaganda that has grown up around the politics involved in bringing into existence the political identity known as K'gari.