In 1849, James Brown, a South Australian pastoralist, was charged with the shooting deaths of nine Aboriginal people. Unable to find witnesses, the crown was forced to drop the case even though the magistrate was convinced of his guilt. Two generations later, a glowing biography of Brown's life noted merely that he was involved in a change of poisoning an Aboriginal man, but emerged from the trial with a clean slate. Why had the story changed so much: form shooting to poisoning, from nine victims to one, from evading trial to being found innocent? Fatal Collisions is about violence on the South Australian frontier and the ways in which it has been remembered in Anglo-Australian accounts of the past.

Wanderings in India: Australian Perceptions - which shares its title with a curious and entertaining travel book written by the first Australian-born writer John Lang - is a collection of essays about diverse encounters between Australians and Indians in both South Asia and the Antipodes. The chapters - creative, reflective, and academic - provide snapshots of the widely diverse reactions Australians have shown towards India. Taken as a whole, the contributions represent a range of responses, reactions, and experiences that chart the course of the ongoing engagement between Australians and Indians. While there is something of an emphasis on literary responses, charting the ebb and flow of writers' reactions to India from the 1850s onwards, this book also includes historical, political, sporting, and other writings about the complex "magnetic amalgams" that link Australia and India. The book encourages ongoing research and other kinds of writing about cross-cultural engagements and discussions of future relations between India and Australia.