Today, roughly 100,000 Gypsies call Australia
home, yet until now their experiences have been hidden from our history, and
from our present.
Here, award-winning memoirist and novelist
Mandy Sayer weaves together a wide-ranging and exuberant history of Gypsies in
Australia. She begins with the roots of Romani culture, and traces the first
Gypsy people to arrive in Australia, including James Squire, the colony’s first
brewer. She meets Gypsy families who live all over Australia, who share the
stories of their ancestors and their own lives.
With her own nomadic early life and
experiences as a street performer, Sayer brings unique insight into the lives
of the people she meets, and a strong sense of their extraordinary history. She
also demolishes some longstanding but baseless myths along the way. Her
original and compelling book reveals a rich part of our history that few of us
even know is there.
