The Kangaroo Islanders: A Talk by Rick Hosking

Join us at the Port Adelaide Historical Society Museum for an evening exploring The Kangaroo Islanders, W.A. Cawthorne’s colonial novel of life on Kangaroo Island between 1802 and 1836.

Written in the mid-1850s, before any official or more orthodox history of the South Australian colony had appeared, it is one of the few colonial novels that shows, in fleeting glimpses, the improvisational and interactive encounters between colonisers and colonised on the edges of the island continent. A remarkable and colourful book.

Rick Hosking has edited and introduced this new edition. He has annotated it extensively with historical detail and the personalities and events behind the story. The book also reproduces many of Cawthorne’s best watercolours in colour.

About the speaker
Rick Hosking is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Flinders University. He teaches Literature, Australian Studies, Creative Writing and Professional English. He was born in the Flinders Ranges and raised on the west coast of South Australia. He co-authored Fatal Collisions: the South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory.