French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was fourteen years old when the
Saint-Paul
was shipwrecked near Rossel Island off New Guinea in 1858. After a gruelling voyage in a longboat across the Coral Sea to Cape York, he was rescued by an Aboriginal family and remained with them as a member of the Uutaalnganu society for seventeen years.
Even though it is all but forgotten in Australia, and in France his Cape York experience is known only in its broad outlines, Pelletier's story rivals that of the famous William Buckley.
Now, for the first time, this remarkable true story is presented in English, accompanied by a comprehensive introductory essay and ethnographic commentary.
This book is required reading for anyone with an interest in Australian history, anthropology, or the intriguing pre-colonial world of a coastal Aboriginal people.
'Stephanie Anderson, with perceptive assistance from ethnographer Athol Chase, has unearthed a forgotten treasure, brought it vividly to life and imparted it with a deep lustre. The moving and melancholy story is every bit as illuminating as the better-known castaway tales of Buckley, Morrill and Barbara Thomson. Prodigious scholarship and keen insight has gone into making this fascinating multilayered book that is part biography, part primary source, part ethnography and part investigative social history.' - Professor Iain McCalman, author of
Darwin's Australia