The White Earth by Andrew McGahan is essentially a gothic novel, set in Australia. The idea of Australian Gothic literature is not new and the genre is well used as Australia’s pastoral history lends itself to many of the key features of the category. The novel also contains elements of historical fiction, exploring the generational passing of time in the Darling Downs region of Queensland as well as some traces of magic realism with dream sequences and spiritual entities. The fact that settlement began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during the rise of the gothic as a sensationalist and meaningfully influential form, contributes to its impact on the literature of Australia. There may be other reasons for its appeal when combining Indigenous elements and pastoral lifestyles. Key elements of gothic novels include: a ruin, secret passageways, a suspicious person, a mad or manipulative person (often a relative), a hero struggling to find the truth, an unresolved past, fear and the dark side, truth in dreams. All of these are present in McGahan’s text.

The novel traces the historical progress of the Darling Downs region. It pieces together the traditional owners lifestyle before colonisation and depicts their fate at the hands of the intruding farmers. The area was originally covered in grassland and traditional owners had an annual burning season at the time when the Indigenous grasses were ripe and dry. This coincidentally kept the area in a condition conducive to farming and grazing that lured the pastoralists. By 1844 ,there were 26 properties including a number of sheep stations with more than 150,000 head of livestock. Squatters were prosperous and Darling Downs became known as the ‘jewel in the diadem of squatterdom’ with an elite ‘pure merino’ class living in comfortable houses. The clash of these two cultures is revisited in the novel through the light of the Mabo court case. Once disempowered, Indigenous people have now found voice through the courts where they are looking to claim title of their lands.

On 3 June 1992, the High Court of Australia decided that the previously assigned classification of ‘terra nullius’, that is an empty land, should not have been applied to Australia. Known as the Mabo decision, this concluded that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have rights to their lands and was a turning point for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander because it acknowledged their unique connection with the land. It also led to the Australian Parliament passing the Native Title Act in 1993. The events and characters of The White Earth show the various aspects of this decision including the build-up and resistance from various groups, which was often narrow minded; pastoralists compared their attachment to the land with those of the Indigenous predecessors, and some were caught in the middle.

McGahan grew up in rural Queensland and is therefore mindful of the concerns of the farmers about land, which he juxtaposes with the wrongs of the past, acknowledging both the connection of next generation pastoralists and the overarching rights of the Indigenous people.