Reaching Through Time

Finding my family’s stories

The powerful story of a Bundjalung woman's journey to uncover her family history.

The phone rang unexpectedly, late one night. 'Guess who our white ancestors were?' chuckled Uncle Gerry. 'They were slave traders! A couple of generations of slave traders!'

After this startling revelation, Shauna wanted to find out more. She discovered her ancestor Robert Bostock arrived in Sydney in 1815 after being convicted of slave trading in Africa, and his grandson Augustus John married Bundjalung woman One My. Battling restrictions on access to government archives, Shauna gradually pieced together her family's stories of dispossession and frontier violence; life on reserves under the harsh regime of the Aborigines Protection Board; a cricket match with Bradman; activism and arts in Redfern; and a surprising reconciliation.

Reaching Through Time reveals the cataclysmic impact of colonisation on Aboriginal families, and how this ripples through to the present. It also shows how family research can bring a deeper understanding and healing of the wounds in our history. Shauna writes, 'I am a proud Aboriginal woman who has always wanted to make a stronger connection to my cultural heritage. I experienced an inner yearning to find out about my ancestors and what they experienced in life. This is the story of my journey.'

'Compelling and courageous truth-telling.' — Dr Jackie Huggins AM, historian and author