Shifting the gaze: Barbara Crawford Thompson and Oswald Brierly's exploratory accounts of Muralag and the Torres Strait

Women's roles and voices within colonial Australian explorer accounts are generally restricted and limited in number. However an account that adopts a female and more sympathetic and relational gaze is based on the experience of the castaway Barara Crawford (also known as Thomspon), as documented by Oswald Briefly and published by David Moore in 1979. In this chapter we conside 'what if', what if Barbara's story was not only narrated through Brierly, but rather than being illiterate as claimed, Barbara was able to narrate the tale herself? Following an introductory section which establishes the first wave experiences of Thompson and Brierly, the content is presented as historially-based fictional journal entries.