When Captain Joseph Frazer rescued Narcisse Pelletier from Aboriginal people in 1875, it was not the first time a white captive had been recovered from Australia’s bushmen. A quarter of a century earlier, sailors from a British naval vessel had carried out a similar rescue, this time of a white woman shipwrecked in the Torres Strait, who had been compelled to live among Aboriginal people as the wife of one of their men. Through Barbara Thompson’s story, we glimpse not only an extraordinary personal ordeal, but also the everyday realities of Aboriginal life as observed by someone who lived within it.
HMS Rattlesnake, the ship that rescued Barbara Thompson. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Click Here to read more Amusing Planet
Barbara Thompson: Prisoner of the Aboriginal
4/
5
Oleh
Chandu Numerology
