Black Wattle

Saint Augustine said, "The dead are invisible, not absent." We carry the genes, the culture, and the stories of those who came before us. Every family’s past shapes how we understand time and place. In 1924, Alice tells a terrible lie to reinvent herself, seeking refuge in the ill-fated Western Australian Group Settlement Scheme. But the past is not so easily erased. As she struggles to forget, fear silences her, and history leaves her behind. Decades later, Jarrah begins to unravel the mystery of Alice’s silence. Following a trail of buried secrets from Australia to England, she pieces together a hidden past—one that forces her to question everything she thought she knew about family and identity.