History features prominently in Indigenous Australianpoetry. Kevin Gilbert's ‘Kiacatoo’ (1988), forexample, recounts a massacre, whereas OodgerooNoonuccal's ‘The Dispossessed’ (first published in1970, when the poet was known as Kath Walker)focuses on the dispossession and oppression ofAboriginal people:

The excerpt from Noonuccal's poem addresses topics thatwere also negotiated in the Mabo case. In grantingnative title for the first time, the High Courtacknowledged Indigenous rights to land since beforecolonisation, and in rejecting the enlarged notionof terra nullius, it adjusted the historicalAustralian narrative. This, explains Geoff Rodoreda,‘shook the foundations of non-AboriginalAustralians’ belief in the legitimate settlement ofthe continent by the British. […] In other words,the Mabo decision of 1992 altered the notion of whatit meant to be a settler Australian’ (2018, 3). TheHigh Court's rejection of the enlarged notion ofterra nullius did not break news to IndigenousAustralians; they always knew better, as Noonuccal'spoem attests. Yet terra nullius – its historicalcontext, its multiple meanings and associations –has remained of interest to a number of Indigenouspoets in the years since the Mabo decision.

Ruby Langford Ginibi's ‘Terra Nullius’ and JimEverett's ‘On the Road with Buck’ are two poeticrewritings of the history of Australian colonisationfrom an Indigenous point of view that follow achronological approach, starting from before thearrival of the British. In addition to anexamination of these two poems, I will also considera very short poem, titled ‘Terra Nullius’, by SouthAfrican-born Australian poet John Mateer, as well asIndigenous poet Samuel Wagan Watson's ‘Welcome to NoMan's Land’. Both of these latter poems areconcerned with negotiating identity in post-terranullius Australia by drawing on the idea ofnon-places.