Travel Writing from Black Australia

Aboriginality has, in recent decades, been appropriated to furnish the Australian nation with a unique and identifiable tourist brand. This is deeply ironic given the realities of life for many Aboriginal people in Australian society. For many travel writers, this clash between different regimes of valuing Aboriginality is one of the great challenges to travellng in Australia. Concentrating on a period marked by the rise of discourses on Aboriginality championing indigenous empowerment, self-determination, and reconciliation, the author analyzes how travel to Black Australia has become a means of discovering ‘new’ and potentially transformative styles of interracial engagement.