Mudrooroo

Mudrooroo Nyoongah
Born	Colin Thomas Johnson 21 August 1938 (1938-08-21) (age 73) Narrogin, Western Australia
Occupation	author, poet,essayist, playwright
Nationality	Australian
Education	B.A. (Hons)
Spouse(s)	Sangya Magar
Children	Three

Colin Thomas Johnson, better known by his nom de plume, Mudrooroo (Born 21 August 1938) is a novelist, poet, essayist and playwright. He has been described as one of the most enigmatic literary figures of Australia and since 2001 he has been living in Kapan, Nepal. His many works are centred on Australian Aboriginal characters and Aboriginal topics.

Also known as Mudrooroo Narogin and Mudrooroo Nyoongah. Narogin after the indigenous spelling for his place of birth, and Nyoongah after the name of the people from whom he claimed descent. Mudrooroo means paperbark in the Bibbulmun language group spoken by the Noongar.

Early life

Mudrooroo was born Colin Thomas Johnson on 21 August 1938 at East Cubelling (near Narrogin) in Western Australia to Elizabeth Johnson (Né Barron) and Thomas Creighton Patrick Johnson (died 7 June 1938). Named Colin after a playmate of his brother Frank, he was the youngest of 12 children (which included three from his fathers first marriage), eight of whom had been taken into state care following the death of his father.

At the age of nine, Mudrooroo and an older sister, then living in the small country town of Beverley with their mother who was a declared destitute, were charged with theft and the two children were "sent to institutions in Perth" by the magistrate. Mudrooroo was placed in Clontarf Boys’ Town, a boys home run by the Christian Brothers just outside of Perth and on the Swan River. It was considered a beautiful location but life was hard and tough, though he did achieve a Junior educational Certificate as well as a strong interest in religion. In his first novel Wild Cat Falling, he wrote about how boys coped with Boys’ Town life; Hard indeed were the blows, but hard indeed were our souls – perhaps?

In 1954, at the age of 16, he left the orphanage.^[1] The Catholic Welfare society found him a clerical job which he loathed and abandoned for a life on the streets. He became what was termed a Bodgie in Australia, a zoot suiter with a taste for juke boxes and rock’n’roll which was then becoming popular with young Australians. In June 1956, Mudrooroo was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment in Fremantle Prison. As it was for many young Aboriginal males then, life would have led to the bottom of the social pile had he not met Dame Mary Durack. Durack, a wealthy Western Australian novelist and poet, invited him to stay with her on his release and later sent him to Melbourne where he would have more opportunities. Mudrooroo later commented that without Durack's influence he doubted he "would have become a writer".

First novel: Wild Cat Falling

With his Junior Certificate Mudrooroo got a job as a clerk with the Victorian Public Service at the Motor Registration Branch. Mudrooroo attended a Buddhist Society in Melbourne and later met the Bohemian poet, Adrian Rawlins who introduced him to the writings of the Beat Generation as well as to artists and writers living in Melbourne. He was inspired by the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and even more by the spontaneous prose of the novelist Jack Kerouac to write his first novel Wild Cat Falling, which was published in 1965. This novel was well received by critics and is still in publication. His early works used a mixture of fiction and autobiography, Wild Cat Falling was about a young Aboriginal man facing racist attitudes in Western Australia and failing to cope with it. Wild Cat Falling includes a foreword by Mary Durack (which has since become an afterword) that reveals what the author was like in his late teens.

In Melbourne, Mudrooroo mixed with writers and poets such as Leo Cash and Deidre Olsen (Crienna Rohan) and artists such as Machem Skipper and the famous Boyd family. Following publication of Wild Cat Falling he married Jennie Katinas, a refugee from Lithuania who introduced him to European style and fashion, while in return he introduced her to his Beatnik lifestyle. After reading The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac and having received advance royalties for his book, they travelled to Thailand, Malaysia, India and then London. Returning to Melbourne after six months, Mudrooroo expressed a desire to return to India.

Travels in India

When Penguin Books bought the paperback rights of Wild Cat Falling, it gave him enough money to return to India with his wife in 1967. They travelled first to Calcutta, then to Darjeeling where they met Lama Kalu Rinpoche with whom they studied as well as receiving initiations. They later travelled across India to Dalhousie where they received an initiation from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. However, Mudrooroo's wife Jennie missed her family and later returned to Australia. Mudrooroo stayed to become a real Dharma Bum, a Buddhist Monk, and spent the following six years wandering India with the Vipassanā meditation teacher, S.N. Goenka giving meditation camps. Although a powerful teacher, Mudrooroo had remained a layman and began thinking about whether it was better to return to his old life. He returned to Melbourne in August 1974.

Long Live Sandawara

After returning to Melbourne Mudrooroo's brother in law Al Katinas, a film maker, suggested that he apply for a grant to write a cinematic treatment of Wild Cat Falling. Mudrooroo decided to write it in Perth and the Australian National Film Board chose the documentary film maker, Guy Baskin to assist him. In Perth he lived in the then seedy Northbridge area, where he began writing his novel Long Live Sandawara. For Long Live Sandawara Mudrooroo chose Jandamarra (Pigeon), a Western Australian Aboriginal hero from the late 19th century, as his main character and he discussed the idea with Mary Durack who had previously written an article about him. Durack gave him a copy of Ion Idriess' book; Outlaws of the Leopolds, a quasi historical account of Pigeon's armed resistance against the British in the King Leopold Ranges of Western Australia which Mudrooroo used as his main source.

In Perth he met Elena Castaneda, a Spanish American tourist. Mudrooroo travelled with her to California and then to San Francisco where he visited the City Lights Bookshop, meeting poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Mudrooroo also visited Haight-Ashbury where he found little remained of the hippies he expected to find. California at the time was the home of counter therapies and with Castaneda he began doing primal therapy. Always short of money, he lived on the streets and eventually ended up in a Salvation Army workshop which cared for the homeless in exchange for work. By the end of 1975 he had finished Long Live Sandawara and returned to Melbourne where he met Aboriginal activist Harry Penrith (later known as Burnum Burnum) and through him, Mudrooroo became active in Aboriginal Affairs.

Melbourne

He went with him to Monash University where he got work at the Aboriginal Research Centre then headed by Colin Bourke. With him Mudrooroo did a short introduction into Aboriginal Life called Before the Invasion. Under his direction he also began writing Dr.Woreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World and went to Tasmania to research the book. A Tasmanian Aboriginal, a Mansell elder, took him over the island telling him stories about an old bloke called King Billy and also introduced him to mutton birding. Back in Melbourne Colin Bourke suggested that he do a university course. He accepted his advice and began a B.A. (Hons.) course at Melbourne University. He met Bruce McGuinness then head of the Victoria Aboriginal Health Service. He had set up Koorie College to teach a health course for Aboriginal students based on the bare foot doctors’ approach to medicine as then practised in China. Mudrooroo taught there a course on Aboriginal culture.

The novel he had finished in California, Long Live Sandawara lay about until by chance he met Anne Godden of Hyland House who accepted it for publication. In 1983 his Tasmanian historical novel, Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World was published. It had been fully researched. Mudrooroo had walked over much of the island of Tasmania with the Mansell elder and seen the sites that he discussed, described and set the action in. His main character was the custodian of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, Dr. Wooreddy, he of the many names and attempts at surviving who ended his life on a ship off the northern coast of Tasmania. He was taken ashore and buried on a lonely island and with his death ended the book.

Change of name

In 1983 Mudrooroo married Julie Whiting, a university librarian and later academic. Their son Kalu was born in 1985 and daughter Malika Claire in 1988. The children were brought up by their mother in Perth, Western Australia. 1988 was a special time for him, a time of Aboriginal uprising in Australia during which Mudrooroo hit the road to visit different Aboriginal settlements to find out how the people lived. It was from his contacts that he coined the term, Aboriginality. In 1988 as a political act he legally changed his name to Mudrooroo after talking it over with Oodgeroo Noonuccal, an early Aboriginal poet. He added Nyoongah later when he returned to his South Western Australian land and needed a second name to change his name legally by deed poll. The name Mudrooroo meant “paperbark” (an Australian tree) in the Noongar language of south-western Australia, of which he knew quite a few words, though it was by then a dead language and nyoongah simply meant person. A Djamadji friend, Allan Morrywalla Barker suggested it. Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal was a great friend and influence on Mudrooroo’s work, adding to his cultural awareness as she took him over her land Stradbroke Island passing over to him the Aboriginality of the land, just as in Tasmania the Mansell elder had done. It was through her that he began taking poetry seriously again and she helped him to put his Song Circle of Jacky (published 1986) together. It was late in 1988 that he decided to go bush and live on the land in Bungawalbyn, the Aboriginal writer Ruby Ginibi’s country in Northern New South Wales.

Mudrooroo’s collection of poetry Dalwarra: the Black Bittern was published in 1989 by the University of Western Australia which had money remaining over from the Celebration of a Nation and backdated it a year. He had been against any Aboriginal participation in the 1988 Bicentenary and this ignoring of his political position resulted in him dashing off a piece of spontaneous verse and prose, “Sunlight Spreadeagles Perth in Blackness”, which was never published, though he declares that it is his “Howl”. Attendance at the First Aboriginal Theatre conference held in Canberra resulted in him writing “Doin Wildcat: a Novel Koori Script as Constructed by Mudrooroo” which appeared some twenty-three years after “Wild Cat Falling”. Anne Godden of Hyland House told him that it was the best thing he had written, with a swinging prose you could read aloud or think aloud. “Doin Wildcat” sought to describe or bring out the feeling and “soul” of an Aboriginal conference and it is filled with “Black Fellow” humour.

Later career

Murdoch University

Mudrooroo had switched from the University of Melbourne to Murdoch University in Perth to finish his B.A. (Hons) which involved writing a thesis. From this Hyland House carved out Writing from the Fringe: a Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature in Australia (1990), a work of critical analysis that was criticised for being too harsh and dictatorial. A little later with Uncle Jack Davis, poet and playwright from W.A., Stephen Muecke, academic, Adam Shoemaker, friend and academic, Mudrooroo put together Paperbark, a motley collection of Aboriginal writings to which he added his novella, Struggling, based on a Bengali novel, by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Mudrooroo had been influenced in his poetry by the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore to such a degree that his Stradbroke Island Dreaming collection reflected some of his love for the land and nature; but the novel, Pratidwandi was about the city youth of Calcutta and how their distress and anger would lead to the Naxalite Revolution of the late Sixties and early Seventies. Yes, the suffering of youth can lead to revolt and rebellion.

In 1991 the volume of poetry, The Garden of Gethsemane was published. The poetry had been written on Stradbroke Island and even in some of the parks and supermarkets of Brisbane. By then Mudrooroo had come across the poems of the Murri poet, Lionel Fogarty and was impressed by them so much that he attempted to follow their style by using words he found in the world around me. Most of this verse didn’t work and was discarded. In 1992 this volume won two Western Australian Premier’s book awards. In the same year he finished Wildcat Screaming in which he introduced his detective character Dr. Watson Holmes Jackamara. He later featured him in The Kwinkin, (1993) a novel set in Fiji which Mudrooroo wrote after meeting the Samoan writer, Albert Wendt who enlightened him about these so-called South Sea Island paradises. Dr. Holmes Watson Jackamara became his favourite creation with the ability through his acute mind to examine and see into the wiles of Australia. His last appearance was in the unpublished novel, The Survivalist.

Der Auftrag the Mission

Published in 1991 Master of the Ghost Dreaming was dreamt from the old Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World which transformed the square historical narrative into a Maban (Shaman) story of magic realism. It became Mudrooroo’s favourite book and had been written in Bungawalbyn away from civilisation on a hundred acres of solitude with a few cows and magic mushrooms and plenty of emptiness to fill with his dreams. This had started out as a screen play but then became a novel which would later develop into a series and then be abandoned when publishers abandoned him and he gave up writing for a long while. There he also put together the poems in the collection Pacific Highway Boo Bloos about Northern New South Wales which he found a fabulous place in which people actually could hear the spirits of Aborigines singing and dancing as well as see the giant prawn.

In Master of the Ghost Dreaming Mudrooroo sought to enter the spirit world and perhaps wanted to live there forever, but the piece of land which he was renting came up to be sold in 1991. It was then that he came to Sydney for a meeting of the Aboriginal Arts Board and met Gerhard Fischer, a German Professor with an idea dating from the bi-centennial, linking together the French Revolution with the invasion of Australia in 1788. He wanted an Aboriginal text to interpenetrate or something like that with a play by the German playwright Heiner Muller, Der Auftrag. Mudrooroo decided to do it to see if it could be done in an Aboriginal way.

Mudrooroo was put in a house of the University of Sydney to do the play and given access to the library with the result he did a lot of reading on Victorian sexuality and discovered the broken backed woman. Strange sexuality was a strong part of Der Auftrag and it was a type of Victorian sexuality that he had to read about. In the library he discovered a whole collection of Gothic books which he found to have been written in the 18th century around the time Australia was invaded and settled. The 18th century was a Gothic monster which could not be ignored for long and it wasn’t. If monsters didn’t make it into the play they entered with a rush in the last three books of the Ghost Dreaming series set during the so-called spread of settlement along the southern coast of Australia, a Gothic series of events indeed. These three volumes are known as his Vampire books and are underground classics.

Professor Gerhard Fischer gave him the opportunity to roam in his mind and after six weeks or so he finished a script called The Aboriginal Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian Republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller. Eventually after much rewriting and editing it was staged in Sydney and then taken to the European festival in Weimar where nearby were the remains of the concentration camp of Buchenwald where the Romany people had been imprisoned and murdered. This evil place provided the inspiration for Mudrooroo to attempt a drama in verse, Iphigenia in Buchenwald which has never been produced

After finishing his commission early in 1992 and being at a loose end after the stint working on the play, Mudrooroo accepted the position on contract for five years as the Coordinator of the Aboriginal Studies program at Murdoch University. During this time he wrote Us Mob—History, Culture, Struggle: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia. This won the Ruth Adeney Koori Award for Aboriginal writing in 1995.

Shamanism

Mudrooroo had always been interested in what is called "Shamanisn" and his Nepali wife's father is a natural shaman (that is, he didn't learn, instead, he had been taken by the spirits to do their work). Speaking to Aborigines from the desert with their culture to a great extent intact, he discovered that their minds were different. He termed this difference "maban reality". He theorised about this in a revised edition of Writing from the Fringe, titled The Indigenous Literature of Australia: Milli Milli Wangka which Anne Godden had urged him to finish so that it was a bit uneven. During this period he was always in a rush to finish some writing or other. In his journal he had mapped out an ambitious list of plots for a planned series of detective books featuring Doctor Holmes Watson Jackamara; but before that he turned to continue the adventures of the Master of the Ghost Dreaming and his band of men and women, the very last of the Tasmanian Aborigines seeking a spiritual home in a demon dominated world in which a female vampire grows in strength. The Undying (1998), Underground (1999), and The Promised Land (2000), are the three volumes written in his Master of the Ghost Dreaming Series.

Controversy

In early 1996, a member of the Nyoongah community questioning Mudrooroo’s Aboriginality approached journalist Victoria Laurie. Informed that Mudrooroo's sister, Betty Polglaze, had conducted genealogical research in 1992 that traced her family back five generations, Laurie contacted Polglaze who told her that she could find no trace of Aboriginal ancestry in the family. Laurie subsequently wrote an article for her newspaper titled Identity Crisis sparking a scandal that received nationwide media coverage in 1996/97.^[2][3][4]

Polglaze's research found that her family were direct descendants of Irish immigrants Edward and Jane Barron who had arrived in Western Australia in 1829 and that their paternal grandfather was Thomas Creighton Johnson, an African American who had arrived in the colony of New South Wales from North Carolina in 1863 and who later married an Irish immigrant, Mary Gallagher, in 1868. Mudrooroo rejected the genealogy, suggesting that the mother listed on his birth certificate "may not have been" his real mother. His brothers and sisters requested he take a DNA test, which was declined. Similarly, a request by the Nyoongah community to substantiate his claimed kinship to the Kickett family was not acknowledged and on 27 July 1996 the Nyoongah elders released a public statement: "The Kickett family rejects Colin Johnson's claim to his Aboriginality and any kinship ties to the family".^[5] Mudrooroo's prior statements about Indigenous writers such as Sally Morgan, whom he excluded from his definition of Aboriginality, did not assist his cause. He had said of Morgan's book My Place, that it made Aboriginality acceptable so long as you were "young, gifted and not very black."^[6][7] Mudrooroo's writings had placed emphasis on kinship and family links as key features of Aboriginal identity. His rejection of his biological family deeply offended the Aboriginal community.^[5]

The resulting scandal and public debate over issues of authenticity and what constitutes Aboriginal identity led to some subject coordinators removing Mudrooroo's books from academic courses and he later said he was unable to find a publisher for a sequel to his previous novel.^[8] Initially, many people came to Mudrooroo's defence, some claiming it was a "white conspiracy" or a racist attack on Aboriginality^[9] with some claiming Polglaze's "amateur sleuthing" was being exploited.^[10] Award winning Indigenous author Graeme Dixon called on Mudrooroo to come forward and tell the truth, stressing that it was important to "out" pretenders and reclaim Aboriginal culture.^[11] Several authors see evidence in his writings that Mudrooroo deliberately assumed an Aboriginal identity to legitimise his work when in his early 20s, although it remains possible he was unaware. Editor Gerhard Fischer believes that it was Dame Mary Durack who "defined and determined" his Aboriginal identity.^[4] In an article published in 1997, Mudrooroo described Durack's foreword to his first novel as the origin of the "re-writing of his body" as Aboriginal. Mudrooroo later replied to his critics, stating that his dark skin meant he was always treated as Aboriginal by society, therefore his life experience was that of an Aborigine.^[12] Mudrooroo retired from public life following the controversy, living for a time on Macleay Island off the coast of Queensland.

Later life

As the 21st century dawned Mudrooroo travelled to Nepal, where he married Sangya Magar, an Indigenous Nepali, on 22 May 2002. Thay have a son, Sam. In Nepal, Mudrooroo began writing his autobiography, which he began to consider his major work. It was then that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, with perhaps only a few years to live. After an operation in November 2010, during his convalescence he did a three week Buddhist sutra retreat to get over his trauma. He laid in bed reading, studying and pondering these sutras: The Larger Sukhavati-vyuha, the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha, The Vajrakkhedika, the Larger Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra, the Smaller Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra, the Amitayur-Dhyana-Sutra, the Vimalakirti-Sutra, the Suramgama-Samadhi-Sutra, and the Lotus Sutra in a translation by Burton Watson. After three weeks, he regained enough strength to get up and continue his autobiography, which he hopes to finish before his life ends. His older children, Kalu and Malika, hope to read about their Father's life one day.

Bibliography

• Wild Cat Falling (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1965; Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1966)
• Long Live Sandawara (Melbourne: Quartet Books, 1979)
• Before the Invasion: Aboriginal Life to 1788, by Mudrooroo, Colin Bourke, and Isobel White (Melbourne &London: Oxford University Press, 1980; Melbourne & New York: Oxford University Press, 1980);
• Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1983 and New York: Ballantine, 1983)
• The Song Circle of Jacky: And Selected Poems (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1986)
• Dalwurra: The Black Bittern, A Poem Cycle, edited by Veronica Brady and Susan Miller (Nedlands: Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, University of Western Australia, 1988)
• Doin Wildcat: A Novel Koori Script As Constructed by Mudrooroo (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1988)
• Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature in Australia (South Yarra, Vic.: Hyland House, 1990)
• Master of the Ghost Dreaming: A Novel (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1991)
• The Garden of Gethsemane: Poems from the Lost Decade (South Yarra, Vic.: Hyland House, 1991)
• Wildcat Screaming: A Novel (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1992)
• The Kwinkan (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson 1993)
• Aboriginal Mythology: An A-Z Spanning the History of the Australian Aboriginal Peoples from the Earliest Legends to the Present Day (London: Aquarian, 1994)
• Us Mob: History, Culture, Struggle: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia. (Sydney & London: Angus & Robertson, 1995)
• Pacific Highway Boo-Blooz: Country Poems (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996)
• The Indigenous Literature of Australia: Milli Milli Wangka (South Melbourne, Vic.: Hyland House, 1997)
• The Undying (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1998)
• Underground (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1999)
• The Promised Land (Pymble, N.S.W.. Angus & Robertson, 2000)
• Edition: Wild Cat Falling, Imprint Classics edition, introduction by Stephen Muecke (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1992)

Editorials and essays

• Struggling, a novella, in Paperbark: A Collection of Black Australian Writings, edited by J. Davis, S. Muecke, Mudrooroo, and A. Shoemaker (Universityof Queensland Press, 1990), pp. 199–290
• The Mudrooroo/Müller Project: A Theatrical Casebook, edited by Gerhard Fischer, Paul Behrendt, and Brian Syron—comprises The Aboriginal Protestors Confront
• The Declaration of the Australian Republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1993)
• Tell Them You're Indian, An Afterword, in Race Matters: Indigenous Australians and "Our" Society, ed. By Gillian Cowlishaw & Barry Morris (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies P, 1997)

Sources

Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Peter Lang (publishers) 2007 ISBN 905201356X

Mudrooroo: A Critical Study, by Adam Shoemaker (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1993);

Mongrel Signatures, Reflections on the Work of Mudrooroo, ed. By Annalisa Oboe (Cross Cultures 64, Amsterdam-New York, Rodopi, 2003).

The Work of Mudrooroo: thirty-one years of literary production, 1960–1991: a comprehensive listing of primary materials (including unpublished work) with secondary sources, compiled by Hugh Webb. Perth, SPAN: Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies , ed. By Kathryn Trees. Number 33 (1992).

References

1. ^ Mudrooroo later claimed that his mother never wrote or visited him, stating that being institutionalised meant the complete loss of family contact. In fact, although she did not visit, his mother wrote to him in Clontarf regularly for seven years.
2. ^ Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Pg 41
3. ^ Fakes, Literary Identity and Public Culture Maria Takolander and David McCooey Deakin University
4. ^ ^{a b} Who's who?: hoaxes, imposture and identity crises in Australian literature Maggie Nolan, Carrie Dawson 2004 ISBN 0702235237 Pg 102 – 104
5. ^ ^{a b} Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Pg 42 – 44
6. ^ The Wanda Koolmatrie hoax: Who cares? Does it matter? Of course it does! Adelaidian 21 April 2007
7. ^ Who's who? Mapping hoaxes and imposture in Australian literary history Australian Literary Studies Volume 21, Issue 4, 1 October 2004
8. ^ Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Pg 9 – 11
9. ^ Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Pg 72
10. ^ Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Pg 42
    On 19 July 1996, the Western australian Genealogical Society certified the Johnson family heritage as "authentic".
11. ^ Maureen Clark Mudrooroo: a likely story : identity and belonging in postcolonial Australia Pg 43
12. ^ Mudrooroo Authors. The Academy

External links

• Author's homepage

Persondata
Name	Mudrooroo Nyoongah
Alternative names	Colin Johnson
Short description	Australian author and poet
Date of birth	21 August 1938
Place of birth	Western Australia
Date of death
Place of death