Work on my next book, Investigating a Forgotten Past is proceeding apace, though as yet I can’t give a definite publication date, since some of the material I need to access is in Alice Springs, while I am still in Faversham in Kent “enjoying” the long nights and cold, gusty days typical of winter in this part of the world. Quite a lot of the information I need to include in this new book goes back almost thirty years, so I have forgotten some essential details, and in any case hope to avoid careless errors of fact wherever possible, which means going back through the copious notes I took back at the beginning of the project.

This current newsletter is being sent to some subscribers through an automated system and manually to others, since there have been a few teething problems holding things up. Hopefully by the time Newsletter Three appears these problems will have been resolved. I have received some most interesting emails in reply to Newsletter One, especially with regard to the visit to Killalpaninna I made with my friend Tony Flower in 2008. It seems many people remain fascinated by the story behind this long-abandoned mission and some, like me, have made the trip there in order to see for themselves what remains. Historically, it is the site where the first ever complete translation of the New Testament into an aboriginal language was produced by Carl Strehlow and…

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JOHN STREHLOW NEWSLETTER Number 1, 1 December 2023

Thank you for signing up for my newsletter, which I plan to send out on a monthly basis. As you know, commencing in 1994 I spent twenty-five years researching, writing and publishing The Tale of Frieda Keysser, which is a very long time indeed to write one book, even a very large one. At times I thought I might never get to the end of it, for most people in the Strehlow family don’t live much beyond 70 and I was 73 by the time Volume Two was launched in Alice Springs on 17 December 2019. I think I am now older than anyone in my direct male line – ever. What a thought! My friends told me it was all taking too long and I ought to just rush through to get to the end years before, but there was simply so much to discover and nobody had ever even looked at most of it, let alone drawn on the information it contained. So – ignoring all advice to the contrary – I decided I had no option but to continue to plough on through thick and thin and would just have to hope I made it through to the end. I did – and I’m very glad I didn’t just rush the ending. It would have been a big mistake to rush the closing stages, and would have defeated the very purpose of setting the…

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