Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose ancestral country on the south coast of Western Australia provides the backdrop to Terra Nullius, an ambitious work of speculative fiction. Coleman’s own family’s stories of resistance and resilience are weaved through what begins as poetic historical fiction and becomes something else entirely. Like many reviews of Terra Nullius, this post won’t give much away for fear of spoiling what is a plot that is best left to your own discovery. What I can say, however, is that I’m sure that when the judges of the prestigious Queensland State Library’s black&write! award picked up the manuscript for what would become Coleman’s debut novel, they felt sucker-punched it.

There’s a beauty in Coleman’s words, which carry a certain poetic quality. Her words are selected carefully, to provoke empathy, even in unexpected places. I found myself feeling more empathy for British settlers than I expected and this is an aspect of the novel that is crafted beautifully. It is written from a clear and deep position of empathy.

Things get weird in Terra Nullius, in the kind of way that speculative fiction is wont to be. The first third of the novel is a slow burn – something you’ll come to understand later in the reading as a deliberate establishment of a world based in historical fact. It’s dense and slow-moving, but in a way that keeps you captivated, which had me thinking of Tom Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney. I read a lot of John Wyndham as a kid, so what ensues is right up my alley. Coleman plays with time in a way that allows her complex narrative to unfold to greatest effect. There were a couple of stages where I felt like the work had been pulled apart and reconstructed in a patchwork fashion, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of it at all.

Terra Nullius is a work you can only read for the first time once. But it’s a novel you’ll return to again with new eyes, and one that will keep you thinking long after you put it down.

3.5★ (rounded up for a promising debut novel)

“The Settlers would be afraid of the bush, of the deep woodland, so different from their Home. That would be the safest place for him in whatever tangled, green and brown, scratchy and dirty, trackless and untidy scrub he could find.”

That’s Jacky, absconded and on the run.

“A sun like that, heat like that – it bleached the entire sky yellowwhite, nothing like the blue sky one was used to from Home. It was that sky that was a warning, the yellow light a warning that this was not a hospitable place. It was the glow of pain, the glow of the end of the world. It was not a friendly colour for a sky to be.”

And that’s Sergeant Rohan, leading the Troopers chasing Jacky.

This is a book in two distinct parts, both with the underlying themes of invasion, colonialism, and dehumanisation of “the other”. It also explores the possible compromise and unification of opposing forces when faced with a third, domineering foreign challenger.

Without giving too much away, although other reviews may have, suffice to say that Coleman has woven a tale around several sets of characters, all in Australia, some at home, some far from home, and all struggling in the current circumstances of change.

Among the Settlers are those representing The Church, with a particularly nasty nun, Sister Barga, who seems to delight in lording it (no pun intended) over her charges, both the younger nuns and the Natives. The Settlers do not allow slavery,

There is a disagreement between two mind-sets in the Settlers, where slavery is forbidden by law. On one hand, Natives are animals, counted as fauna; on the other, there is a view that Natives are sentient beings and therefore, cannot be treated like animals, working only for food and no pay or compensation.

Here is the conflict:

“Natives were not allowed to have money yet they were forced to work. The Natives cannot be slaves, the reports read, because they are not people. Slavery will not be tolerated.”

So while some people are happy to use Natives as they would livestock, others are appalled. Meanwhile, the Settlers have trouble coming to terms with the heat and can’t cope with the climate in Australia as well as the Natives.

About halfway through the book, we are given more insight into the background of the Settlers and the people already living in the country they are attempting to colonise.

It’s an interesting premise, and there are certainly echoes of the refugee experience here, too, with the emphasis on fear and distrust of “the other”, as people remain wary. The following is said with some humour as well as concern.

“‘ . .you did not capture us. We surrendered. We had you out-gunned.
. . .
‘You surrendered but I would feel better if I could see you. Walk along the river, and don’t do anything to make me regret accepting your surrender.
. . .
‘Don’t do anything to make me regret surrendering.’”

When opposing teams try to join forces, there will always be some jostling for position, and Coleman has shown this well.

[As a personal side-note, an experienced farrier and horseman told me years ago that horses will always band together to turn on a newcomer. I suggested then that the best way to have a peaceful mob was to borrow a last horse, to give your own a common enemy. I found that to be true with ours, but as the saying goes, your mileage may differ. The instinct for a pecking order seems to be strong in most species, I think.]

This is an interesting premise and story, longer than it needs to be, but sci-fi fans may enjoy the length. And I think kids will enjoy it, so I'm marking it as suitable for YA readers.

I’ve often said to others that this is the kind of story I’d like to see told, so I’m glad to find the author has tackled it. Now I'm waiting for the next book. For more about Noongar woman Claire G. Coleman, see her website.
http://www.clairegcoleman.com/about.html

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the copy for review from which I’ve quoted.

Research has shown that reading novels improves empathy. Terra Nullius certainly does just that. If you want to understand – on an emotional level – the history and current plight of modern-day Australian aboriginals, this is a good place to start.

The first half of Claire G Coleman’s award-winning debut novel is written in such a way that you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a story of the 1788 British invasion of Australia.

Except it’s not the past. And the British are not the invaders.

Through tiny details drip-fed throughout the first hundred-odd pages we come to understand that the time is now. The displaced people of Australia – both white and black – stand equally broken under the oppression of the colonisers.

Of course – the settlers don’t mean to be cruel, you must understand. They simply don’t consider the inhabitants of Australia to be particularly intelligent… or making good use of the land. The well-intentioned colonisers figure they can simply educate the natives so they can be useful. You know, like servants. Except that it’s so much easier to educate and civilise them if the natives join a mission school from a younger age. And of course, they must cut off all contact with their parents.

Any of this sounding familiar yet?

WHAT I THOUGHT OF IT

Terra Nullius is disturbing and confronting. It is, however, utter compelling. Coleman’s characters absolutely leap off the page at you.

THE COLONISERS

Sister Bagra runs a mission for native children. She’s an utter sociopath – in one scene she’s just thrown terrified small children into solitary lockups barely the size of dog kennels. And yet she’s primarily concerned with HER ability to withstand ‘this terrible place’.

And then there’s the so-titled ‘Protector’ of the natives, nicknamed the ‘Devil‘ who truly appears to believe that he’s helping natives by stealing their children and enslaving them:

"There was nothing to like about the job except the satisfaction he received from helping the Natives to help themselves. Natives raising their own children to the primitive ways they lived before he came, that is unacceptable, they would have to be elevated. The school would help elevate the Natives."

THE COLONISED

Jacky is a runaway native who becomes an icon to his oppressed fellow Australians. All through his hellish life – first on a mission, then in virtual slavery – he’s told himself:

"I am Jacky, he thought, I belong somewhere, I had a family once, I have a family who misses me. This litany played over and over in his head. I have a family, I have a family, I am Jacky."

Esperance and her starving group of fleeing refugees are desperate to escape being enslaved. Her experience echoes that of modern refugee camps. This is the rarely told story of the colonised rather than the colonisers:

"Everybody there had come from somewhere else, thrust together, unintentionally, by the Settlers who had merely pushed them away from their homes, expanding to cover more country. Others had arrived there running in terror, barely escaping the violence that had killed everybody they knew.

"Over the years the camp had grown to over a hundred refugees, all malnourished, all dirty, destitute and homeless. Among them there was likely not one, not even a child, that did not relish a thought of returning ‘home’ one day, returning to wherever they had come from. Every child knew they did not belong there, on that dry riverbank although every child had been born right there in camp."

The stories of attempted escapes from slavery reminded me of the The Floating Theatre – a story of pre-Civil War America – except that these slaves have nowhere to run to. There will be no sympathetic reception on the other side of the Mississippi.

BLURRING THE LINE BETWEEN HISTORY AND FUTURE

The scene which causes Johnny Star – a settler – to abandon his military post and join the natives’ cause is horrific. It draws from established accounts of genocide, where the attackers do not consider their victims to be truly human:

"He saw a woman shot, bent over her child to protect it, then a man shot bending over her to wail for her life. He saw death: death walking and death running, even death dancing. He saw death in the blades and death in fire and smoke."

Terra Nullius demonstrates the power of fiction to tell uncomfortable truths. Mixing narratives from the past and present, it projects the blend into a speculative future. The result is a novel which distances the reader from modern Australian politics while immersing the reader in the ongoing stark reality of the physical and psychological effects of being one of a dispossessed and oppressed people.

These lines, from Johnny Star, truly sent shivers down my spine in recognition of modern day Australia:

"He had learned, through his friends, that the bent, broken drugged and drunk state of those surviving near the Settlements was not the habitual state of Natives. The truth was, it was a sort of depression brought on by what they had lost, brought on by being dominated and controlled by another people. Who could not be depressed, being treated like animals in a land that had once been theirs alone."

It’s not an easy read, but it’s certainly worthwhile.

This book is written as a dystopian novel, but describes events as they happened when the British invaded Australia. A great debut novel by Claire Coleman.