CHUNUMA

First Edition. (Some soiling to covers and light foxing due to age. Gift inscription on fep.) 25.0 x 18.0cms, 160pp, b/w drawings, Not originally intended as a children’s book, ‘Chunuma’ is an account of a boy’s growth to adulthood, set in the Australian outback. Although the book’s vocabulary and syntax suggest that the Duracks wrote it for adults, its format and marginal drawings evoke a children’s book. The text calls Chunuma a ‘piccaninny’ and some people could read the drawings as stereotypical and/or racist. The young sisters were living on their Ivanoe cattle station at this time and the Indigenous workers were teaching them how to cook and muster. This was their second collaborative effort, before they travelled to England. #0121