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Tour Dates
Thursday, 10th November 2022
Byron Bay
What: Don Watson in Conversation
Where: The Book Room in Byron
When: 6:00pm
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Sunday, 13th November 2022
Adelaide
What: Don Watson at the Mud Literary Club
Where: Yalumba Winery, Barossa Valley
When: TBA
Get more info here: TBA
Monday, 14th November 2022
Adelaide
What: Don Watson at Conventry Library
Where: Conventry Library, Stirling
When: 6.30 pm
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Monday, 21st November 2022
Sydney
What: Don Watson at the State Library of NSW
Where: State Library of NSW, Sydney
When: 6.30 pm
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Wednesday, 23rd November 2022
Sydney
What: Don Watson at Roaring Stories
Where: Roaring Stories Bookshop, Balmain
When: TBA
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Wednesday, 30th November 2022
Darwin
What: Don Watson at the Northern Territories Library and Archives
Where: Parliament House, Northern Territories Library and Archives Darwin
When: 5.30 pm
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Monday, 5th December 2022
Melbourne
What: Don Watson at the Melbourne City Reads
Where: Wheeler Centre
When: 6:00pm
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Thursday, 8th December 2022
Brisbane
What: Don Watson in Conversation with Prof Susan Forde, Director, Griffith Center for Social and Cultural Research
Where: Avid Reader
When: 6:30 pm
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Wednesday, 22 February 2023
Canberra
What: Meet the author Don Watson with Prof Nicolas Peterson
Where: ANU Kambri House
When: 6.00 pm
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Wednesday, 29 March 2023
Melbourne
What: Meet the author Don Watson with Corrie Perkin
Where : South Yarra Library
When: 6.00 pm
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Saturday, 27 May 2023
Sydney
What: Sydney Writer's Festival Dicey Topics with Chloe Hayden and Benjamin Law
Where : Carriageworks Bay 24
When: 11.00 am
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Saturday, 27 May 2023
Sydney
What: Sydney Writer's Festival The Passion of Private White with Laura Tingle
Where : Carriageworks Bay 20
When: 1.00 pm
Get more info here
The Passion of Private White
By Don Watson
From the bestselling author of The Bush, the story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and an isolated clan in north-east Arnhem Land – a unique window into Australia’s deep past and precarious present, by one of our master storytellers.
Longlisted for the 2023 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award
The Passion of Private White describes the meeting of two worlds: that of the intensely driven anthropologist Neville White, and the world of hunter-gatherer clans in remote northern Australia with whom he has lived and worked for half a century, mapping their culture and history in breathtaking detail.
As White began to understand this ancient culture struggling between the demands of Western modernity and the equally pressing need to preserve their lands, customs, laws and language, he was also trying to transcend the mental scars inflicted on the battlefields of Vietnam.
Eventually, scholarly observer crossed the line into activist, advocate and defender of the clans’ effort to create a safe and healthy homeland, a seat both of traditional culture and contemporary skills and education. The enterprise meant overcoming everything from insatiable mining companies and official incompetence and neglect, to customs that were fundamental in the old way of life but dysfunctional in the transition to the new. When White began taking his old platoon mates to the homeland, two wildly different groups found in each other some of the solutions and some of the therapy they both needed.
Don Watson has had his own fifty-year relationship with Neville White, since meeting him as an undergraduate in Melbourne. This book is the result: moving, enlightening, devastating and inspiring, it is a towering achievement, a profound insight into both our recent and our deep history, the coloniser and colonised – indeed into the human condition itself.
About the Author
Don Watson's bestselling titles include Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, Death Sentence and The Bush, which won the Indie Book of the Year and the NSW Premier's Literary Award. An acclaimed speechwriter and screenwriter, he is also beloved for his columns and essays on Australian and American politics.
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