Compassion continues Julie Janson’s emotional and intense literary exploration of the complex and dangerous lives of Aboriginal women during the 1800s in colonial New South Wales, which she began in Benevolence as a counter narrative to colonial history in Australian literature. Compassion is the dramatised life story of one of Julie Janson’s ancestors who went on trial for stealing livestock in New South Wales, and it is an exciting and violent story of anti-colonial revenge and roaming adventure. A gripping fictive account of Aboriginal life in the 1800s, Compassion follows the life of Duringah, AKA Nell James, the outlaw daughter of the Darug hero of Benevolence, Muraging.
In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Julie Janson about shaping the character of her ancestor Duringah, and charting her exploits as “the wild native thief”, and how juxtaposing the natural and spiritual worlds of the Darug nation with the terrible reality of life during colonial times illuminates the rich shared history of New South Wales.
About the author
Julie Janson Burruberongal clan of Darug Nation. Novelist, poet and playwright. Julie is a recipient of a Create NSW Arts grant and an Australia Council of the Arts grant for her crime novel: Madukka the River Serpent, with an Aboriginal woman protagonist sleuth. This novel was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Prize in 2022.
Julie has appeared as an invited writer at the Newcastle Writers Festival 2023 and 2022. She also appeared at the Berry Writers Festival 2022/23, the Headland Writers Festival 2022/23 and the BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival 2023.
