[Bookpossum]

I can see your point desertblues, about whether Thornhill would have had those feelings and indeed he swings between some sense of realising he was in someone else's place, for example when he found the carvings on the rock:

155. This place was no more empty than a parlour in London, from which the master of the house had just stepped into the bedroom. He might not be seen, but he was there.

... to telling the women in their camp that they should go:

194. Best stay away out of it, he said. Out of our place.

But of course, it was their place and he was the intruder. I think that even at the beginning of the colony, the settlers knew deep down that they were taking the land and the livelihood of the Aboriginals. I think the guilt of that explains the anger and even hatred which as Marsi said is still there. How dare 'they' make 'us' feel guilty.

For example, there has been for some time a wish to have formal acknowledgement of the Aboriginal people who died in the various frontier wars, trying to defend their land from those who were invading it. The suggestion has been made that there should be something about this at the National War Memorial in Canberra. The historian Henry Reynolds is a part of this movement.

So far, it has been refused as not being appropriate because the War Memorial is about conflicts overseas. But of course it is really because we are still not ready to acknowledge what was done by our forebears to Aboriginal Australians for daring to try to defend their land. I hope one day we have the maturity to face up to it properly and make that important symbolic gesture.

I can certainly recomment The Lieutenant, but I haven't yet read Sarah Thornhill. However, I am sure it would be very good also.

BelleZora, I shall have a think about other books. I'm assuming you are primarily interested in fiction at this stage? Eleanor Dark wrote a trilogy about the early settlement in New South Wales: The Timeless Land, Storm of Time and No Barrier.