Debesa is a sweeping social history of one family’s struggles and triumphs set against the backdrop of the beauty of the West Kimberley.
Author Dr Cindy Solonec is a Nigena (Nyikina) woman from the West Kimberley who graduated with a PhD in History from The University of Western Australia in 2016. Debesa is a rewriting of her thesis that explored a social history in the West Kimberley based on the way her parents and extended family lived during the mid-1900s. But don’t be put off by its academic background; Dr Solonec has done a beautiful job transitioning this story from thesis to biography – from academia to mainstream – without losing any of its historical and cultural importance.
Debesa is an extraordinary and heartfelt story that chronicles the lives of the Rodriguez family of Debesa Station in the West Kimberley; their livelihood through difficult times, love of family, place and culture, and the challenges of day-to-day living on a small sheep station amid huge pastoral properties. It reveals the day-to-day challenges living under the legacy of AO Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines.
Spanning four generations from the 1880s, when the Solonec’s maternal great-grandfather, Indian deckhand, Jimmy Casim, met and lived with Nigena woman, Lucy Muninga, on Yeeda Station near Derby, Debesa centres on the unlikely partnership of Cindy’s parents: Frank Rodriguez, once a Benedictine novice monk from Spain, and Katie Fraser, who had been a novitiate in a very different sort of abbey – a convent for ‘black’ women at Beagle Bay Mission, 130 kilometres north of Broome.
Together, Frank and Katie Rodriguez established Debesa, where Cindy and her three siblings grew up with the rich cultural heritage of their Spanish, Nigena and English ancestors.
Better Reading recently had Dr Solonec on for a Facebook live event, which was fascinating. She discussed the transition from thesis to book, and how she came across more information for this latest incarnation of her family’s story. It really is an interesting read and an important homage not only to Dr Solonec’s family but to so many families who have rich mixed heritage.
Dr Solonec’s polished writing eloquently carries this sweeping family saga forward, and the photos throughout provide a moment to pause and reflect further. The captivating sense of place is also present throughout the book. Often in reviews, we describe this as being ‘richly imagined’ but there is nothing imagined about Debesa. It is real and beautiful and harsh and important, and all the beauty and life and history of the property and its people is present on every page.
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