A deeply personal, profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs.

We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set.
Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an
unforgettable story of country and people.
There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in family, and for the land.
Dank faces head on the ingrained racism, born of brutal practice and harsh legislation, that lies always under the skin of
Australia, the racism that calls a little Aboriginal girl names and beats and rapes and disenfranchises the generations
before hers. She describes sudden terrible violence, between races and sometimes at home. But overwhelmingly this is a
book about strong, beloved parents and grandparents, guiding and teaching their children and grandchildren what country
means, about joyful gatherings and the pleasures of eating food provided by the place that nourishes them, both spiritually
and physically.
Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel
and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a nighttime campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the
welcome scent of fresh water.
We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank
belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in
effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be.