Land Rights circa 1810: Fear and loathing in a strange new land

The Secret River, based on an award-winning Kate Grenville book, is a searing, savage account of the clash of civilisations when British colonialism comes face-to-face with the ancient indigenous culture of First Australians. The miniseries takes a no-holds barred approach to showing the savagery perpetrated when confronted with a seemingly inexplicable alien society, but as one individual settler Thomas Blackwood tries to show, by making the effort to understand the original inhabitants, a peaceful co-existence is possible, & much preferably to the easy, mindless recourse to violence. Hard to watch drama but it is compulsive.