About the Author

Patsy Coverdale grew up in 1950's Redlynch surrounded by the tropical rainforest and cane fields of North Queensland where she became the first qualified woman journalist at The Cairns Post. She shared the lives, social changes and frontier history of both the black and white people around her. Patsy learned from the University of Queensland and from visiting anthropologists and film makers from many parts of the world. Patsy went to Britain in 1957, where she gained experience in journalism and public relations with Australia House. After tours of Britain and Europe, Patsy married Eric Coverdale and studied pottery, fossils and ancient settlements at Oxford until the birth of the first of their two sons. In 1961, she returned with the family to Australia. Patsy visited the north regularly and, as both an Insider and an Outsider, discussed cultural and political events in the north with both Bama and white friends. She also gathered some stories of the coast, the hinterland and the reefs. After an inspiring trip to Laura rock art and Lakefield Na-tional Park in 1990, she completed her Arts degree in Sociology at La Trobe University in 1994. Patsy wrote North Queensland in Black and White to show us culture, history and prehistory of the Bama people of the north and how far white settlers and the Bama have come to understand each other through years of blood, tears and triumph.

Reviews

'We need this book. It bridges the big gap between children's stories and tertiary studies. It develops source material of culture now dispersed. We need to document these for Aborigines and for people in general.' Professor Dr Chris Anderson, Head of Anthropology at the South Australian Museum.