Desert Queen by Susanna De Vries

Author:Susanna De Vries
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

There was a severe shortage of food on the island and the authorities failed to send in sufficient supplies. ‘They were strangers to the island, and the seeds and berries and fish food it could have yielded them,’ Daisy observed. ‘There were plenty of wallabies, but most of the natives were too emaciated and ill to go hunting.’ She described Bernier and Dorré as ‘sad islands of death’.

She was acutely aware of the way in which tribal beliefs, lore and customs were disregarded on the islands. She described how:

When the bleak winds blew, the movable huts were turned against them, facing each other, regardless of tribal customs, which meant mistrust and fear. Now and again a dead body would be wrapped in a blanket and carried away to burial in the sands, and the unhappy living could not leave the accursed ground of its spirit. Some became demented, and rambled away and no one of an alien tribe would go to seek them. One day an old man started to ‘walk’ back over thirty miles of raging waters to the mainland. These shores are infested with sharks, and he was never seen again.3

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