This is an historical novel set in the early years of white settlement in NSW. Matthew Stanton, who seems to have elements of the Rev. Samuel Marsden in his character, is an Anglican minister, magistrate and sheep farmer. His aim is to grow the finest wool in NSW. In this his rival is the convict Desmond Kale, formerly assigned to Stanton but now on the run. Kale was daringly sprung from captivity and is rumoured to be doing his own sheep farming in the bush, beyond the area known and mapped by the white men. Kale becomes an hero and the subject of a ballad amongst the Irish convicts.
This book won the Miles Franklin Award (http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/milesfranklin/) and was chosen by someone else in my book group. I approached it with some trepidation as I usually find award winning goes hand in hand with being impenetrable where literature is concerned. Added to that, it is a big book, 636 pages long. So it was with delight that I found myself being sucked in to the story and wanting to get back to it. Roger McDonald started out writing poetry and it shows, the writing is not always easy, sometimes obscure but is beautiful and uses some of the expressions the first settlers may have used - duck mole for platypus for example.
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