Author talk with Jock Serong

About the book

On the windswept point of an island at the edge of Van Diemen’s Land, the Commandant huddles with a small force of white men and women. He has gathered together, under varying degrees of coercion and duress, the last of the Tasmanians, or so he believes. His purpose is to save them—from a number of things, but most pressingly from the murderous intent of the pastoral settlers on their country.

The orphans Whelk and Pipi, fighting for their survival against the malevolent old man they know as the Catechist, watch as almost everything proves resistant to the Commandant’s will. The wind, the spread of disease, the strange black dog that floats in on the prow of a wrecked ship…But above all the chief, the leader of the exiles, before whom the Commandant performs a sordid dance of intimacy and betrayal.

In The Settlement, Jock Serong reimagines in urgent, compelling prose the ill-fated exploits of George Augustus Robinson at the settlement of Wybalenna—a venture whose blinkered, self-interested cruelty might stand for the colonial enterprise itself.

About Jock

Jock Serong’s novels have received the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction, the Colin Roderick Award and the inaugural Staunch Prize (UK). He lives with his family on Victoria’s far west coast.

About Michaela

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator and presenter. She has conducted radio interviews for Australia’s national broadcaster ABC on programs such as The Music Show and Big Ideas, for ABC Classic and has also presented programs on ABC Radio National, Local Radio and for ABC TV. She regularly facilitates panels and conducts interviews at Sydney Writers’ Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, UNSW, Sydney Film Festival, for local libraries and community organisations.