'It's bad luck to catch a black swan' As one of eleven children, with loving parents, Eileen Harrison feels secure growing up at the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Mission Station in the 1950s. Chosen as the ideal family to test the new policy of assimilation, they are wrenched from the Mission and sent off to Ararat in the hope that they will become part of that community. But unable to build a stable life in the face of isolation and discrimination, the family is torn apart. Eileen must become the protector and the peacemaker. As a child, Eileen set free a black swan caught in a hessian bag. Now the story of the magical black swan from her childhood provides an uncanny map for her life as she struggles to find her path. Powerfully told in Eileen's words, her experiences speak eloquently of what has happened to Aboriginal people over the last half-century.
