King Bungaree

A Sydney Aborigine meets the great South Pacific Explorers, 1799-1830

by Keith Vincent Smith

Kangaroo Press, 1992, [First Edition], ISBN 0864174705, colour plates, black and white photographs, black and white frontispiece, illustrated endpapers (maps), hardcover, dustjacket

Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, water damage (crumpling) to bottom right corner of text block, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows minor edge and shelf wear (see photographs)

“’King’ of the Broken Bay Aborigines who settled in Sydney, Bungaree was witty, intelligent, something of a diplomat.  He accompanied Flinders and Philip Parker King on their voyages of exploration.  For many years he was a Sydney ‘character’, dressed in cast-off European military clothes, often mentioned in contemporary accounts of the colony and often painted or sketched.
In Keith Smith’s story we have the excitement of seeing an Aboriginal taking on a range of attributes and emerging as a recognisable human being rather than a simplistic, familiar portrait.  The resulting book will be widely read largely because of the extreme scarcity of biographical studies of Aborigines.  It contributes not only to the understanding of the Aborigine who was most often discussed and depicted int eh first fifty years but also to our knowledge of those fields of endeavour to which he contributed.”