Cooloola Coast Noosa to Fraser Island: The Aboriginal and Settler Histories of a Unique Environment

By Elaine Brown, St Lucia: UQP, 2000, paperback, $40.00. Reviewed by Dennis Foley in the September 2001 issue.

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Elaine Brown is a retired high schoolteacher and PhD student at the University of Queensland. This book is based on her Masters dissertation, which is a reflection of her love the Cooloola Coast. The Cooloola Coast is the coastal fringe area that covers some sixty-five kilometers from the Tin Can Inlet (adjacent to the southern tip of Fraser Island) extending south to the northern side of the Noosa River area.

Brown states that the Cooloola is a magical place, and rightly so! This is a place of powerful beauty, which retains its spiritual connection to its traditional owners. The scars on the landscape following the colonial rape of the timber and marine resources have not diminished its beauty in Brown's eyes. The destruction of the forests, the ignorant land degradation due to failed Eurocentric farming attempts, the tons of beer cans, bottles and the trash of the fishing fraternity in their noisy four wheel drives have not yet destroyed the beauty of this place. Brown's study encompasses her connection with this land and paints a picture that from an Indigenous perspective is unique in our literary history.

Elaine Brown, a non-indigenous Australian, writes with empathy for Indigenous perspectives. She tables the destruction of Aboriginal Australian society so that the reader is provided with historical data that illustrates 'another side'to the story of the colonial invasion. Whilst the text is widely referenced from many Indigenous and non-indigenous sources spanning a period of over 200 years, it does not include interviews or other forms of input by traditional ownersof this land. The reader may obtain a false impression that the traditional owners are extinct. Several inferences in the first three chapters and in the postscript allude to this. This is not the case. Perhaps Brown is not aware that there are descendants of the traditional owners who retain knowledge of their ancestors and continue to respect this country. If this is the case then I question the books methodology.

To Brown's credit the accounts of the Eliza Fraser story are compelling reading as are her comments on the historical inaccuracies of Henry Stuart Russell's journal of his expedition to the Wide Bay area titled 'The Genesis of Queensland'. His journal was written in England some forty five years after the fact and in Brown's words his [Russell's] early life in Queensland had become a romantic dream(p 86). Brown also highlights the inaccuracies of several other manuscripts such as the history of Queensland by the journalist William Henry Traill in 1888.

A recent review of Cooloola Coast by Brian Williams, in a Saturday edition of theCourier Mail seized upon the false recording of Australia's colonial history. Williams highlighted the fanciful, exaggerated recording of events to sensationalise history for the fame or fortune of the exponents, such as Eliza Fraser. Williams also correctly categorizes Elaine Brown as not another trendy author, rewriting histor, though she attempts to explain inaccuracies.

To the serious researcher or the armchair traveller, this is an excellent text and its style in approaching the contentious recording of our colonial history is a positive step in the understanding of ourpast.

Citation

• Dennis Foley. 'Review: Cooloola Coast Noosa to Fraser Island: The Aboriginal and Settler Histories of a Unique Environment by Elaine Brown' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), September 2001. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 10 September 2010].

Back Cover Blurb

• Long golden beaches and rocky headlands, high forested dunes, dark waterways and broad lakes - these spectacular features make up the Cooloola Coast. Stretching sixty-five kilometres from Noosa to Fraser Island, it is a remarkable and diverse environment.
  
  Cooloola Coast describes the area's many-layered history of human occupation in absorbing detail, opening with the story of its Aboriginal occupants, whose kinship with nature was little understood by Europeans. A new and intriguing account tells of the legendary Eliza Fraser and the effects of her experiences on relations between Queensland's Aboriginal and white inhabitants. The final section features the speculators, timber-getters, farmers and fishermen who came seeking opportunities on a new frontier.

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