'Macklin recounts, with beautiful detail, the following years of
Narcisse's life and his transformation . . . a great read for
anyone interested in Australia and its overlooked history' Ronan
Breathnach, Irish Examiner 'A truly remarkable account drawing upon
a version Pelletier gave when he eventually returned to his native
France and also on anthropological studies of the Daintree people.'
Piers Akerman, Daily Telegraph, Sydney 'An unforgettable tale of
transformation and upheaval.' Stuart McLean, Daily Telegraph,
Sydney A young boy abandoned in an alien landscape thousands of
miles from home is adopted by local people and becomes one of them,
welcomed into their community, marrying a wife and raising a child.
After seventeen years, he is stolen back to his 'real' life, where
he has another family, but dreams constantly of what he has left
behind. This is the remarkable true story of a French cabin boy
Narcisse Pelletier who, after disembarking from his ship the
Saint-Paul with the rest of its crew in search of drinking water,
found himself separated from his shipmates and in the end abandoned
on the north coast of Queensland, Australia. Narcisse was adopted
by an Aboriginal group who welcomed him as one of their own for
seventeen years, during which time he had a family of his own. In
1875, though, he was kidnapped by the brig John Bell and was
returned eventually to his family in Saint-Gilles, France, where he
became a lighthouse keeper. Robert Macklin makes skilful use of
Narcisse's own memoir Chez les sauvages along with new research to
tell this extraordinary story. Robert is a Queenslander so knows
the terrain and the people of the area in which Narcisse was left
behind. Through Noel Pearson's Cape York Institute, he has arranged
to meet descendants of the people who took the French cabin boy in
and who know the stories of his time in Australia. Robert has also
had access to a great deal of material on the early history of the
Cape through the Australian National Library. He has drawn on the
significant resources of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra on Aboriginal
culture and history in Queensland and the Cape. In addition, he has
made use of Narcisse Pelletier's own writings, including his
account of his time in Australia, as well as several
contemporaneous accounts of the Kennedy expedition to the area,
including one from a member of the party. The author has made
several trips to Cape York and one to Saint-Gilles and
Saint-Nazaire in France.
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