Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the dramatic and tragic story of one of the better known First Nations resistance warriors of the early colonies. Then she discovered uncanny connections with her own convict ancestors.
A vivid, compelling portrait of the intertwined lives of Aboriginal people and new arrivals in the fledgling colonies.
Musquito was just a boy when a convoy of eleven British ships assembled in the waters of Port Jackson in January 1788. Seventeen years later, he was a warrior fighting for Country west of Sydney, hunted by white colonists.
Exiled, in Van Diemen's Land he joined with local Aboriginal people as they began the resistance that ignited the colonists' Black War. Wrongly accused of being the ringleader, he was executed in 1825.
Musquito is one of the better known First Nations resistance fighters but even while he was alive, his story was shrouded in misinformation and myth. Historian Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the real story of this remarkable man. Searching the archives for evidence, she realised the lives of convicts in her family tree intersected with Musquito in disturbing ways.
Author bio
Naomi Parry Duncan is a historian specialising in First Nations history and family history. She grew up in Tasmania and now lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW.
She is president of the History Council of NSW, holds adjunct positions at the Universities of Tasmania and Western Sydney, and is senior research officer with the Indigenous Land and Justice Research Group at the University of NSW.
She is co-author of New South Wales and the Great War, and winner of the 2022 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship.
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