Aboriginal historian Barry Corr vividly investigates colonisation – but is less convincing on politics

Barry Corr, an Aboriginal historian, has written a book called Surveying the Wild Abyss, which investigates the colonization of the Nepean–Hawkesbury rivers and the Sydney Plain. The book is divided into three parts. The first part covers this area, while the second part deals with Australian historical consciousness, also known as "settler memory" and the "settler narrative." The third part shares the writings that influenced Corr's perspective on Australia's historical consciousness.

Corr's account of the Parramatta Native Institution, where Aboriginal children were taken between 1814 and 1820, highlights the continuation of this practice throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He argues that despite the well-known devastating effects of the Stolen Generation and the Apology, the taking of children has been reinstitutionalized as a social necessity.

Corr believes that the core issue for decolonization is the inability and unwillingness of the beneficiaries of settlement to recognize, acknowledge, and address the consequences of settlement.

Corr's approach to analyzing Australia's historical consciousness is not based on historical research but rather on intertextual analysis, drawing parallels between texts such as Gilgamesh, Alexander Pope and John Milton's poetry, Charles Darwin, and Joseph Conrad. He presents Australians' sense of the past as less contested, various, and dynamic than it actually is.