1. Country
2. Death
3. Ecology
4. Identity
5. Land rights
6. Respect
7. School students

Jonathan (Jono) is grateful to have graduated from St Lucia private school. With his lifelong friend Jenny, they were recipients of the Great Change scholarships for Indigenous students, and three months later, they are students at APAC. An improvised dance brings Jono to an audition for a part in a documentary filmed in outback Queensland and he welcomes the chance to earn some real money to help his ailing mum. Jono also needs to escape the slavering tongue and claws of the pale dog-man who only he can see – and why do magpies swoop and harass him wherever he goes? The inviting cover was designed by Bundjalung artist Charmaine Ledden-Lewis. A magpie keeps its eye on the close-up view of a dark-eyed Jono – the bird’s breast feathers and his hair are just touching.

All young adult readers will identify with Jono’s school-to-uni struggles and anxieties. He worries that he will lose his friend Jenny in this transition – she is so sure of her Indigenous identity, and gaps in his family history make him question his own. Being called a coconut by other kids doesn’t help. Being out on Country with other mob, he unexpectedly connects with who he is. A supernatural struggle is a huge part of this but author Akhurst blends themes of identity and displacement with environmental and economic issues that will engage readers until the last page.

Author Graham Akhurst is a Kokomini man who grew up in Meanjin (Brisbane). In his Acknowledgment, he says: ‘This work was created in line with the Australian Council of the Arts guide Protocols for Producing Australian Indigenous Writing. While this novel is set primarily on Turrbal, Yuggera, and Gunggari Country, specific places, characters, and events exist only in the author’s imagination. Great care was given to the fictional rendering of cultural and cosmological elements in this novel to avoid the appropriation of story, intellectual property, and heritage. The stories and totemic symbolic meanings in this book are fictitious and of the author’s imagination.’

1. Graham Akhurst author website https://www.grahamakhurst.com/
2. UWA Publishing Teaching Notes prepared by Christine Wheeler https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0542/4573/files/Borderland_Teaching_Notes_UWAP.pdf?v=1693200169
3. Mascara Review 2 Oct 2023 by Anne Brewster of ‘Borderland’ by Graham Akhurst https://www.mascarareview.com/anne-brewster-reviews-borderland-by-graham-akhurst/
4. Arts Hub Book 24 Oct 2023 review by Jessica Gildersleeve of ‘Borderland’ by Graham Akhurst https://www.artshub.com.au/news/reviews/book-review-borderland-graham-akhurst-2675509/
5. Good Reading review Nov 23 of Graham Akhurst’s ‘Borderland’ https://goodreadingmagazine.com.au/featured-reviews/borderland-by-graham-akhurst/
6. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board for the Australian Council for the Arts, Writing Cultures: Protocols for Producing Australian Indigenous Writing, 2002 https://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/tk/en/databases/creative_heritage/docs/atsia_writing_culture.pdf
7. Kokomini People, Graham Akhurst’s mob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokomini
8. Australian Performing Arts Academy https://apac.edu.au/
9. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples