Mark McKenna 
Return to Uluru [EPUB ebook] 

A killing. A hidden history. A story that goes to the heart of the nation.


When Mark Mc Kenna set out to write a history of the centre of Australia, he had no idea what he would discover. One event in 1934 – the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill Mc Kinnon, and subsequent Commonwealth inquiry – stood out as a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time.


But then, through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, Mc Kenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today. As he explains, ‘Every thread of the story connected to the present in surprising ways.’ In a sequence of powerful revelations, Mc Kenna explores what truth-telling and reconciliation look like in practice.



Return to Uluru brings a cold case to life. It speaks directly to the Black Lives Matter movement, but is completely Australian. Recalling Chloe Hooper’s
The Tall Man, it is superbly written, moving, and full of astonishing, unexpected twists. Ultimately it is a story of recognition and return, which goes to the very heart of the country. At the centre of it all is Uluru, the sacred site where paths fatefully converged.


‘Mark Mc Kenna has exposed the wounded heart of Australia. Never has a history of our country so assumed the power of sacred myth.
Return to Uluru is a spellbinding story of death and resurrection that is Australian to its core.’ —James Boyce


‘Mark Mc Kenna sets the highest standard for truth-telling of the kind that Australians so urgently need if they are to live in this country with honour. I feel sure that this book will become an Australian classic, not the first of its kind, but certainly the most powerful narrative I have read of frontier injustice and its resonance in our lives today.’ —Marcia Langton

Circa l’autore

Mark Mc Kenna is one of Australia’s leading historians, based at the University of Sydney. He is the author of several prize-winning books, including From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories, Looking for Blackfellas’ Point and An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark, which won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction and the Victorian, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australian premiers’ awards.