Product Description

Warri and Yatungka were believed to be the last of the Mandildjara tribe of desert nomads to live permanently in the traditional way. Their deaths marked the end of a tribal lifestyle that stretched back more than 30,000 years. The Last of the Nomads tells of an extraordinary journey in search of Warri and Yatungka. The intriguing story of their rescue and how they survived alone for the previous thirty years in the unrelenting western Gibson Desert region of Australia makes absorbing reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31614 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 220 pages

Review
'This intriguing story makes fascinating reading.' Western Australian 'A most remarkable book. The story reads like one from the Dreamtime.' The National times "Informative passages compete with what is essentially a very moving love story." TNT

Western Australian
'This intriguing story makes fascinating reading.'

About the Author
W.J. Peasley was born in the central west of New South Wales and spent his boyhood on his father's farm. There he was greatly excited by his discovery of ancient campsites of Aboriginal people who had long since disappeared from the area. He was also saddened, for this was the only evidence left of a people who had occupied the land for thousands of years. Leaving school at the age of fourteen, he worked on the family farm and at eighteen he enlisted in the 2nd AIF and was a member of the British Commonwealth Occupation forces in Japan. After leaving the army he matriculated and studied medicine at the University of Sydney. On graduation he moved to Western Australia and for twelve years worked as a flying doctor. Following several years in Europe he returned to Perth where he studied anthropology and continued his interest in Australian history, particularly the history of exploration, by embarking on several expeditions into the desert country, following the tracks of early explorers. Married with four grown sons, Dr Peasley now lives in City Beach, Western Australia.

Customer Reviews

Readable and compelling
On a whim I wanted to learn something about Aboriginal Australian culture as it really is and was, it turned out to be a great book choice. I'd highly recommend this readable and compelling account of the search for the last two truely nomadic australians. Moving and informative, its hard not to feel for a people who have lost so much at the hands of white colonial culture and seemingly gained so little. Through the pages we learn how land and culture are/were inseperably tied in traditonal aboriginal life - the land and their relationship to it forms the all important aboriginal "law". On another level the book is also a love story against the odds, set against the backdrop of a beautiful but unforgiving environment. Real books like this, a window on to a fast disappearing world are surely worth there weight in gold! May all beings be well.

Last of the nomads
I read this book whilst spending a year backpacking around Australia, where the Aboriginal people are treated as outcasts by the majority of people.
When over there I only saw a bad side of this race of people, untill I read this book and it really opened my eyes to the way theye are treated and how they have had to cope with a huge upheaval in their lives and culture. A really interesting book that looks at the journey to try and find the last two traditinally living aboriginal people, a really facinating tale of survival.

The End of a Unique Way of Life
This book tells the story of the an elderly Aboriginal Australian couple, the very last of their tribe (and quite probably of all Aboriginals) to pursue the traditional nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life in the remote central deserts of Western Australia.
It starts by explaining how traditional tribal culture came to a near end in the region within the lifespan of a generation as civilization penetrated the once remote Outback, then recalls the life history of this last couple, explaining why they persisted in their homeland even after the rest of their tribe moved to a town.
Eventually, an extreme draught raises fears for their lives and a search expedition is launched to find them, lead by the author of this book and assisted by an old Aboriginal friend of the couple. The search takes them through the extremely harsh and remote Gibson Desert retracing ancient trade routes and rediscovering sacred Aboriginal sites, before finally locating the old couple, "the last of the nomads", and bringing them out of the desert to avoid immidiate starvation by helping them join the rest of their tribe living a demoralized existance on the fringes of western civilization, beset by alcoholism and other social evils.
A brilliantly told, moving story of the disgraceful end of what was once "one of the oldest cultures on Earth", providing excellent background information to help the reader understand how complicated the the underlying roots of this sad outcome are.
Anyone with an interest in the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia should read this book!