A vivid, compelling portrait of the intertwined lives of Aboriginal people and new arrivals in the fledgling colonies. Musquito was just a boy when a convoy of eleven British ships assembled in the waters of Port Jackson in January 1788. Seventeen years later, he was a warrior fighting for Country west of Sydney, hunted by white colonists.

Exiled, in Van Diemen’s Land he joined with local Aboriginal people as they began the resistance that ignited the colonists’ Black War. Wrongly accused of being the ringleader, he was executed in 1825.

Musquito is one of the better known First Nations resistance fighters but even while he was alive, his story was shrouded in misinformation and myth. Historian Naomi Parry Duncan has uncovered the real story of this remarkable man. Searching the archives for evidence, she realised the lives of convicts in her family tree intersected with Musquito in disturbing ways.

‘A stunning work of history and biography. Be prepared to weep.’ Professor Grace Karskens

‘Musquito was a truly fascinating character, and this is a wonderfully researched biography with new insights.’ Professor John Maynard

‘It’s hard to think of another work of Australian history that gives such a rich sense of the entanglement of human lives in the early colony – across Country, oceans, and worlds – or of the ongoing echoes of colonial violence.’ Dr Delia Falconer

‘Parry Duncan deftly interweaves her personal journey with the life and times of Musquito and offers a powerful way forward for writing family history that acknowledges Australia’s shadowy colonial past.’ Dr Stephen Gapps

Released June 2026. Preorder a copy here.

Naomi Parry and Brad Manera with Will Davies and Stephen Garton, New South Wales and the Great War,  Haberfield: Longueville Media, 2016.

When the Great War began in August 1914, the people of New South Wales took up the call to arms. NSW sent more people than any other state to serve overseas and many more worked and volunteered to support the war effort. But the economic, political and emotional strains of war, and the loss of so many young men, and some women, in the service of their country, fanned social and political divisions and wrought lasting changes to the society to which serving men and women would return.

https://anzacmemorialshop.bigcartel.com/product/new-south-wales-and-the-great-war

Book sections and journal articles

• ‘Shut Up & Write! at Varuna, The National Writers’ House’ (with Amy Sambrooke). [In Lemon, N., Bolzle, A., Santa Cruz, M., & Saunders, R. (Eds.). (2025). Cultivating Wellbeing and Community through Writing in Academia: Shifting the Culture with Shut Up & Write! (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003633334]
• ‘From Kerosene to Glow Worms – Interpreting the Wolgan Valley Railway and the Good Worm Tunnel, Historia+, 30 September 2024, https://www.historians.org.au … 2024/9/30/from-kerosene-to-glow-worms-interpreting-the-wolgan-valley-railway-and-the-glow-worm-tunnel
• ‘How a biography brought me to family history: Working on Aboriginal stories’, Traces Magazine, Issue 15, July 2021:12–15
• ‘From the island to the mainland (and back?), in Dee Michell, Jacqueline Z Wilson, Verity Archer (eds), Bread and Roses: Voices of Australian Academics from the Working Class, Rotterdam: Sense, 2015:97–104
• ‘Tracing the past: the Find & Connect web resource’, in Paul Ashton and Jacqueline Z Wilson (eds), Silent System: Forgotten Australians and the institutionalisation of women and children, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014:145–162
• ‘Stolen Childhoods. Reforming Aboriginal and Orphan Children through Removal and Labour in New South Wales (Australia), 1909-1917’, Revue d’histoire de l’enfance «irrégulière», Volume 14, 2012:141–163, https://doi.org/10.4000/rhei.3404
• ‘“Hanging No Good for Blackfellow”: looking into the life of Musquito’, in Ingereth Macfarlane & Mark Hannah (eds), Transgressions: critical Australian Indigenous histories, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007: 153–176, http://epress.anu.edu.au/aborig_history/transgressions/pdf/ch07.pdf
• ‘My mother told me never to part with them’, in Dianne D Johnson, Sacred Waters: the story of the Blue Mountains Gully traditional owners, Broadway: Halstead, 2007:151–158
• Maria Lock, Australian Dictionary of Biography: Supplement 1580-1980, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2005, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lock-maria-13050
• Musquito, Australian Dictionary of Biography: Supplement 1580-1980, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2005, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/musquito-13124
• (with Caroline Evans), ‘Vessels of Progressivism?: Tasmanian state girls and eugenics, 1900-1940’, Australian Historical Studies, Volume 32 (117), October 2001:322–333

Digital history

Digital history is a beautiful way to present research in new and exciting ways. The major projects I’ve worked on are:

The Find & Connect Web Resource
From 2011 until 2014, I had the best job ever as the NSW State-Based Historian on the Find & Connect web resource. It is an Australian Government-funded project to develop histories and archival information to help Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants locate their records and understand their histories. This married my background in child welfare history with archiving, web publishing, and social and cultural informatics.

The Dictionary of Sydney
The Dictionary of Sydney is a historical and cultural resource that explores Sydney’s past and present. I spent four years part-time as project editor and contributor. My articles include Bidura, Royleston, and Yarra Bay House, Lockleys Pylon for the Blue Mountains Icons project and two articles on Workers’ Education Association.

sirrobertmenzies.com
This website was created as part of a project to digitally extend the narrative and the content of the television ABC documentary series Howard on Menzies – The Making of Modern Australia created by Smith & Nasht. I wrote the text, with John Nethercote, and the timeline. It has become a home for Sir Robert Menzies’ archive, life and legacy online. I gained a new appreciation for Menzies from this project.

Lithgow History Avenue website
In collaboration with blacksmith Phil Spark, I wrote the text and did the picture research for the Lithgow History Avenue website. It is a timeline that accompanies a series of sculptures that mark key points in the history of the City of Lithgow. The sculptures and the website were developed for Lithgow City Council in 2013.