No Sunlight Singing

A pioneering novel of Australian Aborigines

Front jacket design

Front jacket design by Arthur Boyd for the original edition of No Sunlight Singing. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner, Random House.

No Sunlight Singing is a 1960 novel about Australian Aborigines and the injustices they suffer. It is set in the Northern Territory in the 1930s and 1940s, and tells the story of Mary, a young part-Aboriginal struggling against prejudice and sexual exploitation by white men.

The book reflects the conditions witnessed by the author, Joe "Yorky" Walker, who spent years in northern Australia as an outback worker and union leader.

No Sunlight Singing has been out of print for many years, but now it is made freely available on this website.

As well as presenting the full text of No Sunlight Singing in various digital formats, this site, created by the author's son, provides background information about the book and its author, and a glossary of the Australianisms used in the book.