Dark Tales from the Long River: A Bloody History of Australia’s North-West Frontier

From searches for serial killers and missing persons to the persecution of migrants and Aboriginal people, David Price takes us back to a time when the line between lawmakers and criminals was lightly drawn. Based on a wide array of contemporaneous accounts of life in the Gascoyne, these sometimes shocking, sometimes disturbing true crime stories depict an era when Australia’s laws served to maintain order rather than to secure justice. Dark Tales from the Long River offers a window into an evolving history of Western Australia that is still struggling into the light.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

‘The tying together of the various threads within each chapter was class writing, and had me engaged from start to finish. The research was impressive, and [the] description of Country was exquisite. It was storytelling done extremely well.’ Darren Moncrieff, journalist

‘Dark Tales from the Long River offers an important and accessible record of social history …’ Writing WA

‘The impressive research in Dark Tales handles shocking content with a deft touch and emerges as an invitation for contemporary audiences to address the willful amnesia underpinning our foundational myths. It is an important and accessible book that should be widely read and discussed.’ Amanda Gardiner, Edith Cowan University, Limina Journal

‘David Price takes us back to a time when the line between lawmakers and criminals was lightly drawn.’ Geraldton Guardian

‘The book testifies to the benefits brought to the telling of Australian history by the creation and ease-of-use of TROVE, the National Library’s online database of Australian newspapers … All this is not a happy read but it is an important one for all who wish to understand more fully the colonisation process, and particularly its costs.’ History West