MUSQUITO: The real story of a legendary colonial warrior - talk by Dr Naomi Parry Duncan
Schedule
Sat Aug 01 2026 at 01:00 am to 02:30 am
UTC+10:00Location
Liverpool Regional Museum | Liverpool, NS
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Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the dramatic and tragic story of one of the best-known First Nations resistance warriors of the early colonies. Astonishingly, she also discovers her own convict ancestors are entangled in his story. Musquito was just a boy when a convoy of eleven British ships assembled in the waters of Port Jackson in January 1788. Seventeen years later, he was a warrior fighting for Country west of Sydney, hunted by white colonists.
Exiled to Van Diemen's Land he joined with local Aboriginal people as they began the resistance that ignited the colonists' Black War. Wrongly accused of being the ringleader, he was executed in 1825.
Musquito is one of the best-known First Nations resistance fighters of the early colonies but even while he was alive, his story was shrouded in misinformation and myth. Historian Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the real story of this remarkable man. Searching the archives for the smallest fragments of evidence, she realised the lives of convicts in her family tree intersected with Musquito in disturbing ways.
Musquito's remarkable life offers new insights into how Aboriginal people navigated ways of living alongside the new arrivals.
'Musquito was a truly fascinating character, and this is a wonderfully researched biography with new insights.' - Professor John Maynard
'Musquito breaks important new ground in how we might meaningfully tell the life stories of people pushed to the margins of history. Parry-Duncan deftly interweaves her personal journey with the life and times of Musquito and offers a powerful way forward for writing family history that acknowledges Australia's shadowy colonial past.' - Stephen Gapps
Dr Naomi Parry Duncan is a professional historian and sometime academic, who has written for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Dictionary of Sydney and the Find & Connect web resource. She has also produced New South Wales and the Great War for the Centenary of Anzac. Her research focuses on the interconnected lives of First Nations people and more recent arrivals.
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Where is it happening?
Liverpool Regional Museum, 462 Hume Hwy, Liverpool NSW 2170, Australia, LiverpoolEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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