B. Wongar

B. Wongar
Born
Sreten Božić

1932 (1932)
Gornja Trešnjevica, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Died (aged 94)
Melbourne, Australia
OccupationWriter

Sreten Božić (Serbian Cyrillic: Сретен Божић; 1932 – 8 March 2026), known by his pen name B. Wongar, was a Serbian Australian writer. For most of his literary career, his writings concerned the culture of Aboriginal Australians, and the disintegration of their traditional society owing to the effects of colonisation and the mining industry in the 1960s and 1970s. His 1978 short story collection, The Track to Bralgu, on which he collaborated with Australian writer Alan Marshall, was released to critical acclaim by the foreign press, who were led to believe by publisher Little Brown that Wongar was of Aboriginal ethnicity. The revelation that Wongar was a Serbian immigrant, as well as inconsistencies in his life story, subsequently led to controversy and allegations of literary hoax and cultural appropriation, particularly in Australia. However, his work was lauded abroad, including by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and several Australian literary critics have praised the quality of his writing.

He is known for five works which came to be known as the "Nuclear Cycle", as they reflected the effects of uranium mining as well as British nuclear testing in Australia. He is also known for Totem and ore: a photographic collection, and his autobiography Dingoes Den.

Early life

Sreten Božić was born in 1932 and grew up in the village of Gornja Trešnjevica, near Aranđelovac, Serbia, then Kingdom of Yugoslavia.[1] His birth name means "Merry Christmas" in English.[2] He grew up during World War II, and life was hard for him and his family, and he did not receive much formal education; "a great deal was passed on through storytelling, oral history", he later said.[3] He had two brothers, Milosav and Milenko.[4] Božić said that his family was harassed by the Tito regime after the war, and his father died in prison. He left Serbia when he was 13, moving first to Italy[5] in 1948.[4]

He then moved to Paris, France, where he worked in a car factory.[5] There, he met people involved in the socialist and Anti-Algerian War movements, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, [4] who helped him to publish his literary works in their literary magazine Les Temps Modernes.[6] While in Paris, he corresponded with the German writer Heinrich Böll, Irish writer Samuel Beckett, and South African writer Alan Paton, as well as Aboriginal leaders Sir Doug Nicholls and Yami Lester, and Australian Labor Party politician Gordon Bryant.[4]

Career

Writing

Božić arrived in Sydney, without papers and not knowing a word of English,[5] in 1960. After meeting Alan Marshall in Melbourne, he decided to follow the author's advice and travel to central Australia to write about the Australian bush and Aboriginal people. He set out with his brothers Milosav and Milenko, working on mining sites at Coober Pedy in South Australia and Paraburdoo in Western Australia.[4]

In his search for a job (as a construction worker or miner), he bought a camel in order to cross the Tanami Desert.[7] He got lost on the way to Halls Gap after his camel got sick from eating salt bush,[5] and was close to death when he was saved by an Aboriginal man called Juburu,[7] who took him to Wyndham, in the Kimberley. He stayed there for around three months, getting to know the Aboriginal inhabitants. Moving around the desert areas, he tried to learn some of the local dialects, which he later used in his stories, with an attempt to use authentic words for the setting.[5] Božić lived with Aboriginal people[7] in the Northern Territory[8] west of Darwin[5] for around 10 years in the 1960s.[5] The name Banumbir Wongar (usually spelt Barnumbirr), which means "morning star" and messenger from the spirit world, was said to be given to him by his wife Djumala and her relatives. He also later stated in an interview that "B." is in recognition of his Serbian name.[7] The surname is derived from the Yolngu word Wangarr.[4] His assumed name was also variously spelt Birimbir, Bahumir, and Banunbir.[9] For most of his literary career, the concern of his writing was, almost exclusively, the condition of Aboriginal people in Australia.[7]

In 1972, he collaborated with Australian writer Alan Marshall to publish a collection of stories titled Aboriginal Myths (described as non-fiction[10]), based on stories passed on by people of the Delissaville Aboriginal community (now Belyuen) and Gove Peninsula. His informants included some prominent Aboriginal men, including "Prince of Wales" (the Larrakia artist, singer, and dancer Midpul (1935–2002)[11]) and the Ngolokwangga elder Jim Muluk.[4]

Also in collaboration with Marshall, he published The Sinners: Stories of Vietnam. After the publishing house had collapsed, he looked elsewhere for publishers, and his books were published in Europe, the UK, and the United States during the 1970s and 1980s.[7] After moving to Melbourne in the 1970s, he began developing more of his stories for publication.[7]

His collection of stories The Track to Bralgu, with a preface by South African author Alan Paton and a foreword by Marshall, was published in 1978 by American publisher Little, Brown and Company.[7] The stories show the impact of white society on tribal Aboriginal people, in particular the negative effect of large-scale mining.[12] During this time he also became involved in the Indigenous land rights movement.[3] The book earned critical acclaim from the foreign press, who were led to believe by publisher Little Brown that Wongar was of Aboriginal ethnicity.[13][14][12] It was translated into French as Le Chemin du Bralgu, from the original manuscript and published in Les Temps modernes on 15 April 1977.[15]

The protagonist of his 1975 novel The Trackers is a south-east Asian man, who leaves his home in Melbourne to live with Aboriginal people in the Australian desert for a time.[7] A Science Fiction Encyclopedia reviewer says that the novel "interestingly evokes Franz Kafka in its depiction of the surreal bureaucratization of the architect protagonist's discovery that he is gradually turning Black, and must escape white society".[10]

Some of his stories were published in 1980 and 1981 in Australian publications, and included in a collection of his stories titled Barbaru, published in the United States in 1982 by the University of Illinois Press. The publication was supported by a National Endowment for the Arts and the state government agency Illinois Arts Council.[16] In 1991, the Australian Book Review published a review of Barbaru, by Rosie Adams et al.[17]

In April 1981, author Robert Drewe wrote a piece in The Bulletin that revealed B Wongar's real identity.[12] After this, Wongar was criticised by some for having obtained government funding under false pretences, and some discredited his work as fake. Others, including academic Eve Fesl and Drewe, were more sympathetic; the latter wrote that he was "a kind of living novel".[7] Paul Sharrad wrote in a 1982 article that, despite the problematic nature of a white man writing under an assumed identity, the stories in the collection "open to the world a window onto a little-known culture", and cast light on some important social issues.[12]

His "Nuclear Trilogy", comprising the novels, Walg: A Novel of Australia, Karan, and Gabo Djara, were written in the 1980s.[18] The trilogy was first published in Germany, translated from the original manuscript by Annemarie and Heinrich Böll.[19] A library holding dated 1982 titled Walg, including a typed review by Simone de Beauvoir, a map of the Northern Territory, and a glossary, along with correspondence between Wongar and the Fryer Memorial Library at the University of Queensland, is in existence.[20] The first edition in English was published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York in 1983, and is available on the Internet Archive,[21] complete with the review by De Beauvoir. The novel is dedicated to Wongar's wife, Djumala, and includes a note saying that it is fiction, but that around 500 tribes and 600 languages existed before the colonisation of Australia, and only a few have survived.[22] Comparing the German translation of Walg (Der Schoß[23]) to its English version published by Braziller in 1990, Tess Caiter wrote in 2003 that the English edition had been censored.[19] The novel was also translated into Spanish in 1983,[24] and into Dutch in 1992.[25] In his 1999 autobiography, Dingoes Den, Wongar wrote that the German translation remains the only complete text and unabridged version.[26] The trilogy depicts "Eugenics-based experiments" carried out on an Aboriginal woman by a corporation involved in uranium mining and nuclear testing.[10] Gabo Djara was dedicated to his later life partner, Prue Grieve, who also edited some of his work.[7]

After police had raided Wongar's home and taken some of his work, including the sole copy of the manuscript of his new novel Raki, the Australian author Thomas Shapcott spoke about the case at the opening of the Adelaide Festival in March 1990. He circulated a petition asking the state authorities to see that the confiscated manuscript be returned to Wongar. About 200 writers at the festival signed the petition.[27] It took Wongar about five years to write Raki again.[28] The novel is the only one in which there is any reference to Serbia, and is told by a first-person narrator who begins telling stories of Serbian folklore that become intertwined with Aboriginal stories.[7] This was followed by his new book Didjeridu Charmer, which completes his nuclear series, thus making the series a quintet.[29]

Australian publishers Angus & Robertson started republishing his earlier work in the 1990s.[7] In 1991, Wongar's short novel Marngit (an Aboriginal word for "magic man", or "healer") was published by Collins / Angus & Robertson in Australia, described by the publishers as an "anthology of engaging tales focusing on the creatures of the Aboriginal bush, as well as legendary figures from Aboriginal lore".[30] This was the first time a book-length work by him had been published in Australia before being published elsewhere - and also published an Australian edition of The Track to Bralgu.[3] In a 1992 interview, he said that he writes fiction, not history, and considered himself an artist, and that he felt a deep compassion and respect for Aboriginal people, and admired their culture.[3]

One of his articles was published in Smoke Signals, the magazine of the Aborigines Advancement League.[2]

Photographs

While he was in the northern part of Australia, Wongar worked on his Totem and Ore photographic collection, also known under the title Boomerang and Atom. The collection contained several thousand black-and-white photographs portraying the impact of uranium mining and the British nuclear testing on tribal Aboriginal people. In 1974, Wongar was asked to send some of the Totem and Ore photographs for an exhibition in the Parliament House Library in Canberra. The exhibition was shut down two days after the official opening.[31][7]

Reception

Therese-Marie Meyer wrote in her 2006 work Where Fiction Ends: Four Scandals of Literary Identity Construction that Wongar's books were the most widely known literary representation of Australian Aboriginal culture.[32]

Wongar's work was admired by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He has been widely praised in Europe and his books have been translated into several languages.[13] However, his early works were little known in Australia,[3] he remains little known in his home country of Serbia.[2] Canberra Times reviewer Hamilton Smith wrote in 1992: It is ironic that Wongar has attracted his greatest recognition outside Australia. Apart from the political and social overtones implicit in his works, he is foremost a gifted writer. A writer who happens to possess a special understanding of the circumstances of black Australians".[3]

The revelation that Wongar was a Serbian immigrant,[13] as well as inconsistencies in his life story, led to controversy and allegations of literary hoax and cultural appropriation.[33][34][4][35][3] Criticisms of Wongar range from being a white man who usurped Aboriginal culture, to the claim saying that all artists are charlatans, who con the public.[36] Australian novelist and playwright Thomas Keneally wrote in 2003 that the American publishers of The Track to Bralgu, Little Brown, had stated that he was Aboriginal, and reviewers had assessed the book "as written by a person who we now discovered did not exist". Keneally had called the stories "brilliant... an extraordinary new book", but owing to the confused identity: "Time might prove him to be a highly significant Australian writer, but his deception has soured his reception in the English-speaking world".[13] Much of this centres around his identity, which was speculated upon incorrectly at times; the "deception" referred to by Keneally.[3] Wongar spoke about these criticisms in an interview published in 2010, saying that he had become part of an Aboriginal family (after marrying an Aboriginal woman), a member of the tribe, and felt the responsibility towards his extended family. He said that he wrote about the plight of the Aboriginal people, who had been poorly treated since colonisation, and also wrote from the oral history that he had been privileged to hear from his group. He said that much of what he wrote was sad and depressing, and many people did not want to read about the disintegration of Aboriginal society.[5]

Personal life and death

Wongar married an Aboriginal woman called Djumala in a tribal ceremony in the 1960s,[7] and they had two children. He lived in the Northern Territory for around ten years, broken by a few trips to Melbourne to collaborate with Alan Marshall, with whom he had Aboriginal Myths published in 1972. He decided to move to Melbourne permanently because his family group had to keep moving to escape the authorities, the Aboriginal land was being taken over by mining interests, and "it wasn't good for me to be white in the area, to be on a reservation".[5] He had intended that they follow him to Melbourne when he moved there around 1970, but he did not see them again. Reports of Djumala's death vary;[7] Wongar said in an interview published in 2010 that he had been told by the local Aboriginal people that she and the children had drunk water from a poisoned well.[7][5]

Wongar is reported to have travelled back to Serbia to see his father for the last time in 1966, on an Australian passport.[37]

As of 2006 he was dividing his time between suburban Melbourne and a rural property called "Dingoes Den" in Noojee, Gippsland, where he kept several dingoes.[7] In an interview published in 2010, he said that he had three dingoes, which he believed were reincarnated members of his family.[5][38]

In 2008,[2] filmmaker Andrijana Stojković, who is an assistant professor of documentary directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia,[39] spent four weeks interviewing and filming Wongar.[2] This resulted in the 60-minute documentary feature Wongar, which was eventually released in 2018, screening at several film festivals as well as having a cinema release.[2] The director focuses mostly on his straitened circumstances, living on his dilapidated property, then caring for six dingoes.[38] He had collected and kept many old newspapers, books, publications, and art relating to Australia in the 20th century. The film was shot over four weeks, which included one week of shooting in the Northern Territory, where the filmmakers spoke to Aboriginal elders in Oenpelli (Gunbalanya). There, one old man recognising the author upon being shown a photograph.[2]

He was a life member of the Australian Atomic Ex-Servicemen's Association,[40] after its formation in 1985 (later Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association).[41]

Wongar died on 8 March 2026, at the age of 94.[42]

Awards and honours

Selected publications

Original works

  • The Trackers: a novel Outback Press, Collingwood, 1975
  • The Last Pack of Dingoes, Angus & Robertson (Australia), 1993 ISBN 9780207171475
  • Nuclear Cycle/Quintet
  • Dingoes den, Imprint, 1999, ISBN 978-1-875892-58-7
  • Totem and ore: a photographic collection (2006), Dingo Books, Carnegie, Victoria 2006 ISBN 9780977507801

Translation

Appearances on television and film

  • A Double Life. The Life and Times of B.Wongar (1994). 56-minute video written and directed by John Mandelberg[46]
  • "Dingoes, Names and B. Wongar" – interview with Jan Wositzky, for ABC Radio National's Books and Writing program (2001)[47]
  • Wongar (2018), a 60-minute observational documentary on his life directed by Andrijana Stojković, which won first prize at the prestigious Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival[48] and was screened at Dokufest in 2019[39] and streamed at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in 2020[38]

References

  1. ↑ Meyer 2006, pp. 149, 151–153.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Stojković, Andrijana (6 July 2020). "Interview with Wongar director: Andrijana Stojkovic". The Curb... (Interview). Interviewed by Akbar, Travis. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Smith, Hamilton (9 May 1992). "Wongar:a white speaking for blacks" (PDF). The Canberra Times.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Gibson, Jason (2017). "B. Wongar, Author (circa 1932-)". Museums Victoria Collections. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "B. Wongar". "Australian Voices: Writers and Their Work" (Interview). Interviewed by Willbanks, Ray. University of Texas Press. 2010. p. 201-214. ISBN 978-0-292-72378-8. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  6. ↑ B. Wongar – Sreten Božić (Aleksandar Petrović: "Dve Povesti i Jedna Priča; Uvod u delo B. Vongara). Koraci Časopis za književnost, umetnost i kulturu, Kragujevac, Serbia 3 November 2011.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Matthews, David (2006). "B. Wongar (Sreten Bozic 1932-)" (PDF). DLB 325: Australian Writers, 1975-2000. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Gale. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2016.
  8. ↑ Doyle, Kymberley (13 February 2026). "Wongar, B." Fryer Library Manuscripts. University of Queensland Library.
  9. ↑ "Wongar, B. (1932-)", Trove, retrieved 22 June 2026
  10. 1 2 3 "Wongar, B". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 12 September 2022. Archived from the original on 21 May 2026. Retrieved 11 July 2026.
  11. ↑ "Prince of Wales". Art Gallery of NSW. 27 December 2002. Archived from the original on 21 September 2025. Retrieved 11 July 2026.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Sharrad, Paul. "Does wongar matter?". Kunapipi. 4 (1). Retrieved 9 July 2026 – via University of Wollongong. PDF
  13. 1 2 3 4 Keneally, Thomas (30 August 2003). "The borrowers". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  14. ↑ Feuer, Alan (22 June 2007). "Meet the writer who disappeared between her own dark lines". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 9 July 2026.
  15. ↑ "Les Temps Modernes". Gallimard (in French). 15 April 1977. Retrieved 8 July 2026.
  16. ↑ Wongar, B (1982). "Babaru". Retrieved 8 July 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  17. ↑ "Index for 1991: Nos 129-137". Australian Book Review. 22 January 2025. Retrieved 8 July 2026. index, p.3
  18. ↑ Ross, Robert: "The track to Armageddon in B.Wongar's Nuclear Trilogy," World Literature Today, Winter 1990
  19. 1 2 Caiter, Tess (2003), "Censored creativity: B Wongar's original version of Walg [Paper in: Sojourners and Strangers.]", Journal of Australian Studies (77): 117–121, 197–199, ISSN 1444-3058
  20. ↑ Wongar, B. (Birimbir); Beauvoir, Simone de (1982), Walg, pp. 1–7, retrieved 10 July 2026
  21. ↑ Wongar, B (1983), Walg : a novel of Australia (library catalogue entry), Dodd, Mead & Co., ISBN 978-1-923024-14-4
  22. ↑ Wongar, B (1983). Walg : a novel of Australia. pp. 1–247. Retrieved 10 July 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  23. ↑ Bahumir Wongar: Schoß: Roman aus Australien, Lamuv-Verlag, 1983, ISBN 9783921521786
  24. ↑ Wongar, B (1983), Walg : regreso a la vida, Txalaparta, ISBN 978-84-8136-070-7
  25. ↑ Wongar, B; Willemse, Regina (1992), Walg : roman over Australie, Bridges Books, ISBN 978-90-70306-19-9
  26. ↑ Wongar, B. (1999), Dingoes den (library catalogue entry), ETT Imprint, ISBN 978-1-875892-58-7 – via Trove
  27. ↑ Pullan, Robert: "In Police Custody: 200 Pages of B. Wongar's novel", The Australian Author, Vol 21, No 4, Summer 1989/90
  28. ↑ Ross, R: Universality of human suffering, News World Communications Inc 1998
  29. ↑ Ljiljana Bogoeva Sedlar: Mapping the Other, Mapping the Self: B. Wongar's Novel Raki (1994) Facta universitatis Series: Linguistics and Literature Vol. 2, No 9, 2002, pp. 313 – 325 Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade
  30. ↑ B. Wongar (1991), Marngit: a novel (library catalogue entry), Moss Vale, NSW: Angus & Robertson, ISBN 978-0-207-17070-6 – via Trove
  31. ↑ Schwartz, Larry (11 November 2006). "The Cold War spy, the photographer, and hidden history from a big land". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  32. ↑ Meyer 2006, p. 149.
  33. ↑ Takolander, Maria; McCooey, David (2004). "Fakes, literary identity and public culture". Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 3: 57–65. hdl:10536/DRO/DU:30002675.
  34. ↑ Naaman, Zhou (8 June 2017). "Thomas Keneally: 'Cultural appropriation is dangerous'". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  35. ↑ Brantlinger, Patrick (1 December 2011). "Notes on the postmodernity of fake(?) Aboriginal literature". Postcolonial Studies. 14 (4): 355–371. doi:10.1080/13688790.2011.641911. ISSN 1368-8790. S2CID 162024452.
  36. ↑ Gunew, Sneja (November 1987), "Culture, gender and the author function: 'Wongar's' Walg. Authenticity and authority in Aboriginal writer, Bunambir Wongar's novel" (library catalogue entry), Southern Review (Adelaide), 20 (3): 261–270, ISSN 0038-4526
  37. ↑ Стевановић, Драгољуб (18 November 2019). "Јутро уз ћирилицу". Politika Online (in Serbian). Retrieved 8 July 2026. the last time he came to his homeland in 1966 with an Australian passport, to see his old father Stevan in Gornja Trešnjevica... [translation by Google]
  38. 1 2 3 Johnson, Travis (8 July 2020). "MDFF Review: Wongar". Cinema Australia. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  39. 1 2 "Wongar". Dokufest. Retrieved 10 July 2026.
  40. ↑ Nikolic, Hranislav (1 June 2017). "Aboriginal Myths". SBS Language. Retrieved 11 July 2026.
  41. ↑ "AESASA". Nuclear Voices. 1 January 1970. Retrieved 11 July 2026.
  42. ↑ UMRO ČUVENI SRPSKI PISAC Krcun ga ostavio bez posla, on peške stigao do Pariza i postao legenda! Evo ko je bio Sreten Božić koji je osvojio svet (in Serbian)
  43. ↑ Hughes, Ted; Heaney, Seamus (1982). Arvon Foundation Poetry Competition: 1980 Anthology. Kilnhurst Publishing Company. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-9508078-0-5. Retrieved 10 July 2026. Winner of a prize of ₤100
  44. ↑ "Grants list 1986–87", Australia Council, p.82.
  45. ↑ "Awards Alumni". Australia Council Awards. 2019. Archived from the original on 6 April 2019. 1997 Boro Wongar
  46. ↑ Mandelberg, John; Weaving, Hugo; Koutsoukos, Christina (2000), A double life : the life & times of B. Wongar, Weaving, Hugo; Koutsoukos, Christina; and Special Broadcasting Service (contributors), Griffith University, retrieved 22 June 2026
  47. ↑ Wongar, B (13 December 2001). "Dingoes, Names and B. Wongar". Radio National (Interview). Interviewed by Wositzky, Jan. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 4 May 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2007. Widely published overseas, Wongar has been translated into many languages. Yet in Australia he's virtually unknown and his titles 'The Track to Bralgu', 'Walg' and 'Karan' are almost unheard of in this country. [Jan Wositzky, in the intro.]
  48. ↑ Nikolic, Hranislav (16 April 2018). "a unique story about the white Aborigine". SBS Language. Retrieved 10 July 2026.

Sources

Further reading

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