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Author Kirli Saunders brings her Aboriginal roots into the limelight
Native Australian culture is often lost and forgotten, but one writer wants to bring it the attention it deserves.
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Adventurer: Kirli can often be seen riding her motorbike around southeast Australia. The freedom she feels on a motorbike helps her creative process. (-/Paul Jones)
Kirli Saunders never saw anyone who looked like her in the books she read or the movies she watched growing up.
As an Australian of Aboriginal descent, her darker skin and her culture was, and still is, rarely featured in the landscape of her home country’s popular media. Native Australian culture is even less represented around the world.
Kirli, an author, poet and emerging playwright, is on a mission to change that with her work, including her children’s book The Incredible Freedom Machines.
The book is beautifully illustrated by well-known Australian artist Matt Ottley and features a young brown girl on a harrowing journey, with only her motorbike as a companion.
Riding motorbikes, while commonplace in Indonesia, is an unusual activity for women in Australia. However, Kirli grew up around motorbikes due to her father’s and grandfather’s interest in riding, and she soon began to love the freedom it offered her.
Her book is based on a specific trip she took at a time when she was struggling with several things in her life.
“At the time I was moving through a hard patch of anxiety and depression,” Kirli said. “After I was done, I sat down and was so grateful at the opportunity to be free of worry and concern.”
