Abstract

The work of historian Peter Read has, for the last ten years, focused largely on the question of non-indigenous “place belonging” in Australia. Over three critical texts, Returning to Nothing , Belonging , and the recent Haunted Earth , he explores the attachments to spe- cific sites that non-indigenous Australians feel and articulate. Informed by a postcolonial politics that admits the illegitimacy of European invasion and the devastations caused to indigenous culture and country over two centuries, 1 Read is concerned with restoring some legitimacy to settler Australian presence, attainable, his books propose, through meaningful engagements with the land over time