What to read after Eyre?

WHO REALLY WAS EYRE?

In every way Eyre was great, but also an enigma. This book tackles who he really was as much as taking you along with him in remarkable explorations and adventures.

But how can you account for his extraordinarily positive relationships with Aborigines?

Imagine yourself as the Aboriginal warrior named Pulcanta who had been captured during a bloody skirmish with colonials. You are being carted to Adelaide by the victors, who have manacled you. There is no time to mourn the friends and relatives you lost during the battle: your yearning to be free is what consumes you now. The cart’s wheels squeal as it lumbers along the cliff top high above the lazy Murray River. Without warning, the longing to escape overpowers your logic and you leap from the cart, tumbling through the air and crashing down into the water far below.

Shocked policemen grabbed their carbines and a hail of lead poured down after Pulcanta as he struggled in the water, wounding him in three places. He was bandaged up and placed back in the dray before being taken to Adelaide, where against all expectations he recovered.

Charles Sturt described Pulcanta as “the most fearsome-looking warrior I had ever seen and who hated the colonials.” Yet Pulcanta declared later to Sturt, Daniel Brock and others that Edward John Eyre had caused him to now love the white man!

How had Eyre wrought this amazing change of attitude in a man so filled with hate? Might we learn some principles about how to bridge the relational gulf that still exists between many Aborigines and other races by reading this book about Eyre’s life and worldview?

READ ON!