Melbourne Books invites you

to the launch of  LINE OF BLOOD: The Truth of Alfred Howitt by Craig Horne

To be launched by Hilary McPhee

Line of Blood: The Truth of Alfred Howitt tells the full story of Australia’s so-called ‘ablest anthropologist’; the botanist, geologist, senior public servant and explorer Alfred Howitt—and ancestor of the author, Craig Horne.
Howitt first made his name in Australia as a bushman and explorer—Mt Howitt and Howitt Plain in the Victorian Alps are named in his honour. That he was an extraordinarily capable polymath is not challenged. What this book challenges are the contributions of Howitt’s anthropological conclusions, coupled with his social and political influences, in legitimising the murderous advance of white settlement upon the Australia landscape.
For Howitt, the ‘line of blood’ that followed white settlement was nothing more than the iron law of replacement—whereby an ‘inferior race’ is inevitably usurped by a ‘superior civilisation’. Howitt’s racial ideologies facilitated a pattern of Australia’s mechanical dismissal of First Nations peoples; identifying them as ‘savages’, ‘blacks’, and in need of saving through a determined white policy of paternalistic neglect.

Craig Horne worked as the Communications Manager for Aboriginal Affairs Victoria for ten years and was a member of the Victorian Archaeological Survey in the 1970s. In that time, he was confronted with the devastating impact of Australia’s racism on First Nations peoples and became determined to help those wanting to hold a mirror up to these destructive ideologies. He subsequently worked as a public servant and speechwriter. He has also pursued a successful parallel career as a musician and singer on the Melbourne scene over the last fifty years.
Craig has published a trilogy of music biographies with Melbourne Books, including Daddy Who?; Roots: How Melbourne became the music capital of the world; and more recently I’ll Be Gone, Mike Rudd, Spectrum and how one song captured a generation.

Hilary McPhee is a writer, editor and founder of McPhee Gribble Publishers with Diana Gribble. She was also Chair of the Australian Council for the Arts 1994-97 and inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne until 2004.  Her books include Other People’s Words, Wordlines and Memoirs of a Young Bastard: The Diaries of Tim Burstall and Other People’s Houses.

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