Why a Booktrail?
1997, 1967: Some secrets linger across decades
The Silence
What you need to know before your trail
It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father, phoning from Sydney.
30 years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens’ next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared. At the time, it was thought she had gone to start a new life; but now things have changed and Isla’s father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive. Now, he’s under suspicion of murder.
Reluctantly, Isla goes back to Australia for the first time in a decade. The return to Sydney will plunge her deep into the past. The more Isla asks about the past, the more she learns. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia’s colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?
Locations
Reset- Australia - NSW
- A: Ivanhoe
- B: Bomaderry
- C: Kinchela
- D: Cootamundra
- E: Sydney - Bay Street
Travel Guide
Travel BookTrail style to the darker side of British/Australian history
The author write in her author note that she wanted to write a story about homesickness as she has experience of moving to Australia. However, when writing this story, she found another during her research. The story of how some relations between Australia and Britain have been swept under the carpet all these years.
The novel looks at the appalling treatment inflicted on Australia’s First Nations people when the British established colonies. Far from learning that the white settlers were brave pioneers as the history books had taught her, she learned that the experiences of A boringinal and Torres Strait Islander people had been disremembered.
The forced removals of Aboriginal children depicted in this bok took place after Australia became an indepndant nation in 1901. Children who were forced from their families during this time (From 1910 – 1970) and they are known as the Stolen Generation.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Silence
Destination/location: NSW, Sydney Author/guide: Susan Allott Departure Time: 1960s
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