Don Watson in conversation

Hawthorn, Woiwurrung Country, 687 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122

Join us to hear Don Watson and Paul Barclay in conversation.

The Passion of Private White describes the meeting of two worlds: that of the intensely driven anthropologist Neville White, and the world of the last traditional hunter-gatherers clans in remote northern Australia, with whom he has lived and worked for half a century, mapping their culture and history in astonishing detail. As White tried to comprehend this ancient culture crushed between the need to adapt to modernity and yet hold onto their lands, customs, laws and language, he was also trying to transcend his own mental scars suffered on the battlefields of Vietnam.

Don Watson has had his own fifty-year relationship with Neville White, since meeting him as an undergraduate in Melbourne. This book is the result: moving, enlightening, devastating and inspiring, it is a towering achievement, an astonishing insight into both our recent and our deep history, the colonizer and colonized -– indeed into the human condition itself.

This event is free to attend but bookings are essential.

Please book here.

This event is wheelchair accessible.


Cover image for The Passion of Private White

The Passion of Private White

Don Watson

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