TASMA WALTON is a proud Boonwurrung woman from the saltwater country of Melbourne and surrounding coastlines. She is an award-winning actor and has published both adult and children’s books.

Her new book, I Am Nannertgarrook, is based on a true story of Tasma’s ancestor who was kidnapped by sealers and enslaved far from her homeland.

What are you reading now, and why?

On my bedside table, I currently have a stack of three books.

• Anita Heiss’ Dirrayawadha: Rise up. The author so deftly and compassionately brings to life difficult stories that call out to be told and heard.

• The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders read the stars
by Duane Hamacher with Elders and Knowledge Holders. I’ve always been fascinated with the blanket of Sky Country ever since my Nana pointed out
her favourite constellations to me when I was young. I imagine laying under the stars at night was like watching
a constantly rolling, breathtaking film for our Old Ones.

• The Coming Wave: AI, power and the 21st century’s greatest dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar. Forewarned is forearmed!

If you were to put two books that you really loved in friend’s hands, what would they be?

This is impossible to answer, and I like to think of myself as a generous friend, so I’m going to give them an initial stack of five books:

• Loving Country: A guide to Sacred Australia by Bruce Pascoe & Vicky Shukuroglou

• World on the Edge by Lester R Brown

• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

• 1984 by George Orwell

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

These literary visions are taking terrifying shape in today’s reality.

What books have made you cry, or laugh out loud?

I must confess, I am more of the crying variety, and the list of books is long.

I recall being grief-stricken for days by The Lorax by Dr Seuss, as a kid, and experiencing the same thing as a young adult when I came across The Twenty-Ninth Day by Lester R Brown – shattered by humans’ wilful obliteration of the natural world. In The Bone People by Keri Hulme, the description of the child’s stillness moved me because I saw myself reflected, trying to be small and unseen in the atmosphere of family violence.

Of course, any book exploring the truth of First Nations’ experience in Australia, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as the poetry of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Abi Cobby Eckermann will see me weeping barely a few pages in.

What were your favourite books as a child?

As a child, I loved escaping to fantasy realms and magical worlds so would often re-read Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Wood, alongside C S Lewis’ ‘Narnia’ series. The dystopian world of The Chrysalids by John Wyndham also fascinated me – such a stark vision of the horrors of discrimination, rigid conformity and self-righteous prejudice, still so resonant today.

Can you tell us a bit about the story that inspired you to write I Am Nannertgarrook?

I Am Nannertgarrook follows the story of a young woman abducted by sealers from a beach on the Mornington Peninsula, with her fellow kin and their children, and forced into slavery. It’s based on the experience of my Boonwurrung ancestor, Eliza Nowen/Gamble, and the harrowing accounts of women like her as recorded in the colonial journals of the time.

For many years now, I have increasingly felt an urgency to bring the stories of these kidnapped women to light and to, somehow, reclaim their voices and agency, to ensure that what they endured is no longer ignored or forgotten.

What sort of research did you do when writing the book?

I investigated the various journals and diaries of the British government men involved in the colonisation of southern Australia and their records of the sealing and whaling men, along with gathering the oral history of Elders about our family stories. I learned that the challenges faced by black women and their children in the bloodlust of colonisation were brutal.

What emotions did writing this book bring to the surface for you?

This was undoubtedly one of the most difficult creative endeavours I’ve undertaken. Researching and reading the records of the time was harrowing in itself. As I chose to write this book with a first-person narrative, telling the story entirely through Nannertgarrook’s eyes, I had to fully immerse myself in how I imagined she was feeling, what she was seeing and experiencing. Even though it was only for mercifully small periods of time, reliving her captivity certainly left me deeply moved, sorrowful, yet also proud of her extraordinary survival.

If you were hosting a dinner party, who are six people (living or dead) you’d love to invite?

Virginia Woolf – ‘Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’

Meryl Streep – ‘Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else too.’

Oodgeroo Noonuccal – ‘My son, your troubled eyes search mine/Puzzled and hurt by colour line./Your black skin as soft as velvet shine;/What can I tell you, son of mine?’

Maya Angelou – ‘History, despite its wrenching pain/Cannot be unlived, but if faced/With courage, need not be lived again.’

Oprah Winfrey – ‘We have to make the choice – every single day – to exemplify the truth, the respect and the grace that we wish for this world.’

Nannertgarrook – how wonder-filled it would be to hold my ancestor in a tight embrace and tell her she is loved and remembered.

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