Naomi Parry Duncan - Musquito

Name: Naomi Parry Duncan - Musquito
Start: 2026-07-17T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-07-17T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6.30pm Friday 17 July

Naomi Parry Duncan in conversation with Delia Falconer

Naomi Parry Duncan uncovered the dramatic and tragic story of Musquito, one of the better known First Nations resistance warriors of the early colonies, before discovering uncanny connections with her own convict ancestors.

Musquito was just a boy when a convoy of eleven British ships assembled in the waters of Port Jackson in January 1788. Seventeen years later, he was a warrior fighting for Country west of Sydney, hunted by white colonists.

Exiled, in Van Diemen's Land he joined with local Aboriginal people as they began the resistance that ignited the colonists' Black War. Wrongly accused of being the ringleader, he was executed in 1825.

Even while he was alive, Musquito's story was shrouded in misinformation and myth. Historian Naomi Parry Duncan searched the archives to uncover his real story and realised the lives of convicts in her family tree intersected with Musquito in disturbing ways.

'A stunning work of history and biography. Be prepared to weep.' Professor Grace Karskens

'Musquito was a truly fascinating character, and this is a wonderfully researched biography with new insights.' Professor John Maynard

'It's hard to think of another work of Australian history that gives such a rich sense of the entanglement of human lives in the early colony - across Country, oceans, and worlds - or of the ongoing echoes of colonial violence.' Dr Delia Falconer

Naomi Parry Duncan is a historian specialising in First Nations history and family history. She grew up in Tasmania and now lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW. She is president of the History Council of NSW, holds adjunct positions at the Universities of Tasmania and Western Sydney, and is senior research officer with the Indigenous Land and Justice Research Group at the University of NSW. She is co-author of New South Wales and the Great War, and winner of the 2022 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship.

Delia Falconer is the author of two novels and two works of creative nonfiction. Sydney, a personal history of her hometown, was shortlisted for seven national awards across the categories of history, biography and nonfiction, and won the 2011 "Nib" CAL/Waverley Library Award for outstanding research. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney.