Janette Turner Hospital

One consequence of my migratory flight paths and seasonal residences is that my mail trails a country or two behind, and catches up with me late, in redirected clusters; thus, in May, in Florence, I have just seen the March issue of LRB. Imagine my surprise to find that a letter I had written in, and sent from, London had been re-routed, and declared to have come from the vague vastness of Ontario....

As anyone who has even a passing familiarity with my novels, short stories and articles knows very well, I am indeed aware of what Gordon Kerry (Letters, 23 January) describes as ‘the old legal fiction of “terra nullius" ’ and of the long overdue changes to that Eurocentric doctrine that were signalled by the 1992 High Court ruling on Mabo v. Queensland. In Queensland, home to both Eddie Mabo...