Stories about the Nyangbal Aboriginal people.
With a new cover courtesy of the National Library of Australia! Buy your copy today! CLICK HERE
Buy your copy today! CLICK HERE
Nice write up in The Echo newspaper if you want to know more about the sequel to ‘The Magpie and the Snake,’ ‘Savages.’
Listen to a reading of Chapter Three on YouTube for FREE!
‘Steve’s book is frickin brilliant, unputdownable.’ – H
Goes global! Go to Booko.com.au to buy a copy at a bookshop near you!
Find out what happened to Gawngan after ‘The Magpie and the Snake’ in this FREE Designrr flipbook!
The Book Room in Lennox and Byron Bay is now selling ‘The Australia’s Black History’ series!
The Board Walk Books Kingscliff is now selling ‘The Australia’s Black History’ series!
The Ballina Visitor Information Centre is now selling ‘The Australia’s Black History’ series!
Kickstarter
Steve recently launched The Magpie and the Snake on Kickstarter, a crowd funding platform, to help raise funds to publish the book. The platform has since declared his book a #projectwelove – their way of highlighting brilliant examples of creativity. Those who contribute to the project will receive a book once published.
‘The Magpie and the Snake’ is now selling. Check out the Store to find out more information.
After handing out 30 copies to local English teachers, the indigenous community and students the feedback is that they can’t wait to get a copy. There really is nothing like it on the market. The YA book blends history and fiction to tell the story of life might have been like for an Aboriginal clan living at the time of the English invasion.
I’ve seen a lot of sites destroyed in my lifetime and some of those sites were thousands of years old. While another 200 sites have been discovered in the last year alone around Ballina, just as quickly as they’re being identified they’re being destroyed. It’s time we stepped up, spoke up and started protecting them.
Whether we like it or not, what went on here and our part in its destruction is part of our history. We don’t like to talk about it, but it’s a shared history that exists in Ballina and throughout Australia. And it’s still happening today. Last year Rio Tinto destroyed a sacred site in the Juukan Caves. 50 000 years of priceless history was destroyed overnight.
Some people might think there are two histories of Australia. There’s not. It’s time we acknowledged it and started looking after it.
Did you know indigenous content makes up less than 1% of content taught in English?
We teach novels set in Afghanistan, China and Cambodia but we don’t teach novels about Australian history and culture.
‘The Magpie and the Snake’ fills this gap. The book celebrates the rich culture of the Aboriginal people and carefully interlaces the practices, language and beliefs of the Nyangbal people of the time, working to make the unfamiliar more familiar and authentic for the reader, reminding us of the rich culture so decimated by colonisation.