Nicole Watson
Lawyer Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group who has has worked for Legal Aid Queensland, the National Native Title Tribunal, the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency and as a columnist for the National Indigenous Times so there’s no doubt she knows the environment in which the events that make up the plot line of The Boundary take place.
Read:
The Boundary, where the rejection of a Native Title claim on Brisbane’s Meston Park (which seems to be a merger of Musgrave Park’s cultural significance and Davies Park’s riverside location) is almost immediately followed by the deaths Justice Bruce Brosnan who presided over the case, Aboriginal lawyer and campaigner against welfare dependency Dick Payne, and an unnamed Queensland Premier.
As the narrative unfolds, there’s little doubt the deaths have some connection to the unsuccessful Land Rights case, and Queensland politics, the state’s public service and sections of the indigenous community come under fairly damning scrutiny, exposing endemic corruption, a preference for media spin over decisive action, administrative inertia and a sadly predictable thuggery in the police force.
Most issues that affect the indigenous community rear their ugly heads in a novel that probably won’t trigger a series (one suspects there isn’t a great deal of long term potential in the key protagonists this time around) but Watson displays a talent for telling a story that’ll have me watching for anything else she comes up with.
