About The Poet
Judith Wright was a renowned Australian poet, environmentalist, and activist. She was deeply committed to preserving Australia’s unique landscapes and biodiversity. Her activism contributed to the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef and other natural sites. Some of her most famous collections include The Moving Image (1946), Woman to Man (1949), and The Gateway (1953). She was the campaigner for aboriginal rights.
The poem “Nigger’s Leap, New England” reflects on Australia’s history during the era of European exploration in the 1600s and 1700s, when Dutch, Spanish, and later British settlers arrived. These settlers seized the land, leading to devastating consequences for the Indigenous Aboriginal people. The poem’s title refers to a tragic event where Indigenous individuals were forced off a cliff to their deaths. The phrase “New England” in the title symbolizes the colonizers’ mission to transform Australia into a European colony, recreating England on foreign soil.
The eastward spurs tip backward from the sun. Nights runs an obscure tide round cape and bay and beats with boats of cloud up from the sea against this sheer and limelit granite head. Swallow the spine of range; be dark. O lonely air. Make a cold quilt across the bone and skull that screamed falling in flesh from the lipped cliff and then were silent, waiting for the flies
At the start of the poem, Judith Wright describes the beauty of the Australian landscape, highlighting cliffs, clouds, beaches, and rocks. However, this natural beauty contrasts with the tragic history tied to the land. The setting sun and growing darkness symbolize not only the end of the day but also the loss of freedom and happiness for the Aboriginal people. The colonizers arrived suddenly and without warning, their ships bringing devastation. The mountain peaks (eastward spurs) seem to turn away from the setting sun, as if anticipating the looming darkness. As night falls, shadows spread silently along the coast like a hidden tide. Clouds, still lit faintly by the last sunlight, approach the steep cliffs, creating an ominous atmosphere. This setting foreshadows the tragedy to come. The darkness descending over the mountains mirrors the erasure of the Aboriginal people’s rights and freedom. The “lonely air” symbolizes helplessness, silently witnessing the horror as Indigenous people are forced to jump to their deaths. After their fall, the air covers their lifeless bodies like a cold, indifferent blanket. The screams echo their suffering—not just from their voices but also from the impact of their bones and skulls breaking on the rocks below. These haunting images reveal the immense pain and injustice suffered by the innocent. Their bodies are left abandoned, with no dignity, waiting only for flies to consume them.
Here is the symbol, and climbing dark a time for synthesis. Night buoys no warning over the rocks that wait our keels; no bells sound for the mariners. Now must we measure our days by nights, our tropics by their poles, love by its end and all our speech by silence. See in the gulfs, how small the light of home.
The second stanza intensifies the horror, symbolizing the arrival of colonizers without any warning. The absence of signs like bells or buoys left the “mariners” (people) defenseless against hidden dangers. To fully grasp these events, one must consider opposites—day is understood through night, warmth through cold, love through its end, and speech through silence. The natives were forced to measure their lives by darkness, reduced to slavery, and their lands divided and claimed. Their voices were silenced, and the idea of home lost all meaning. In their own homeland, the Aboriginal people were rendered homeless and displaced.
Did we not know their blood channelled our rivers, and the black dust our crops ate was their dust? O all men are one man at last. We should have known the night that tidied up the cliffs and hid them had the same question on its tongue for us. And there they lie that were ourselves writ strange.
The poet poses a powerful, rhetorical question, highlighting that the Indigenous people were fully aware that their rivers were nourished by their blood and the black dust was their ashes. The land and its resources, such as rivers and soil, have been shared by all, including the Indigenous people, and ultimately, humanity is united. Every action affects everyone. Colonizers should have understood this from the start, recognizing that they too could face the same fate. Both colonizers and the colonized will eventually die, and no one can escape that reality. The phrase “they lie that were ourselves writ strange” suggests that what was once familiar or integral to us has now become distant or changed, making it seem unfamiliar.
Never from earth again the coolamon or thin black children dancing like the shadows of saplings in the wind. Night lips the harsh scarp of the tableland and cools its granite. Night floods us suddenly as history that has sunk many islands in its good time.
Unlike other poems that end on a bleak note, this poem ends with a hopeful message and a warning to the colonizers. The poet compares the native people to shadows, inseparable from their land, just as shadows are always connected to their source. These shadows represent young children running freely along the shore, symbolizing the promise and hope of new life, like saplings growing and spreading hope. The poet suggests that while history has drowned many islands, it can never erase the existence of these people. The only real threat they face is the night, yet they can endure and overcome their struggles, as life will continue. Judith Wright emphasizes that history and time have the power to submerge any island, and even England is not immune to this fate.
