One family traced from the 1860s to the 1980s, beginning with Cornelius Laffey, an Irish - born journalist. Wresting his kin from the easy living of nineteenth - century Sydney, he takes them to northern Queensland where thousands of hopefuls are digging for gold in the mud. The family confronts the horror of Aboriginal dispossession, and Cornelius is sacked for reporting the slaughter. The cycles of generations turn, one over the other. Only some things change. That world and this world both have their Catholic priests, their bigots, their radicals. Winner of the inaugural Steele Rudd Award, this is an unforgettable tale of the other side of Australia's heritage.

On a January morning in 1930, in an island mission off the Queensland coast, the superintendent goes on a rampage that rips the community apart. Afterwards, only a few are free to leave, but even back on the mainland they cannot escape the effects of the brutality they've witnessed. Two decades later, violence once again erupts on the island. Here is a paradise turned hell, where the winds of change have slowed to the feeblest of breezes. Based on an actual incident that took place on Palm Island, this award-winning novel brilliantly allegorises an Australia still living in the shadow of its past. And in forecasting the tragedies of the twenty-first century, it proves itself more powerfully relevant than ever. 'Formidable . . . uniquely provocative, acerbic and glittering' The Australian