Ryan Butta: Blackbirding

Next date: Saturday, 10 October 2026 | 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM

The Friends of Kiama Library and the Kiama & District Historical Society are pleased to bring you one of our favourite authors, Ryan Butta, to talk about his ground-breaking new book, Blackbirding.

You will know Ryan from his popular non-fiction books, The Ballad of Abdul Wade and The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli.

Blackbirding, is an important reckoning with Australia’s unspoken history of slavery. As Australia becomes more willing to confront the violence and trauma of its colonial past, one chapter has remained largely hidden: the Australian slave trade, known as blackbirding.

Between 1860 and 1906, more than 60,000 Pacific Islanders were brought to Australia to work the Queensland sugarcane fields. Men, women and children were taken from their homelands through coercion, deception or outright abduction. Forced into contracts they could not read, unpaid until the end of their service, and denied basic rights, they endured brutal working conditions that led to the deaths of nearly 15,000 people.

In this immersive and meticulously researched work of narrative nonfiction, Ryan Butta confronts one of the least acknowledged episodes in Australian history. Exposing a deliberate ‘engineered forgetting’ that has kept these stories out of the national memory, this book brings the hidden history of blackbirding into the light and reckons with the enduring legacy of Australia’s forgotten slave trade.

$8 Friends and Kiama Historical Society members / $10 guests (includes afternoon tea). Everyone welcome.

Books available for purchase and signing.

Tickets are available online, at the library, or call 02 4233 1133.

Ryan Butta

Ryan Butta is an Australian author of narrative nonfiction that blends original research, history and literary storytelling. He is the author of The Ballad of Abdul Wade, shortlisted for the South Australian Premier’s Awards Non-fiction Book of the Year 2024, and The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli. His books focus on overlooked lives and the hidden histories that shape Australia. He lives and works on Dharawal country on the New South Wales South Coast.