Hidden Lives

Caroline de Costa

It seems a perfect beach in tropical north Queensland, yet a sign marks the site where fifteen Aboriginal people were massacred more than a century before. Then on a sunny morning in 2002 the body of a young Aboriginal woman washes up on the sand. Accident … or murder?

Close by lives Cairns forensic pathologist Leah Rookwood, on the island handed down through four generations of Rookwoods. As Leah’s colleague Detective Leslie Fernando investigates the modern- day death, Leah discovers some dubious history in her own family. Are the distant events and the current tragedy linked?

The background to my story in ‘Hidden Lives’ is the story of Mary Watson on Lizard Island and the direct result of this: the massacre of a large number of people of the Dingaal Warra, Binthi Warra and Dharrpa Warra clans in the McIvor River Area of Far North Queensland by mounted police and troopers.
I wish to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the country of these clans, and pay my respects to Elders both present and past, in particular those Elders who died in the massacres of 1881.
I hope that in writing the book I will increase public awareness of these tragic events. Caroline de Costa

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