I did enjoy reading this book, but not as much as i enjoyed the more recent Tiger Men. I felt that Beneath the Southern Cross attempted to cover too many historical events and too many generations. The significance of earlier events were lost amidst the succeeding events, though the more recent...
He continued to watch until it disappeared from sight. To Bernie, the aircraft signified their utter isolation. It was a link between everything he couldn’t see. He couldn’t see the homestead beyond the ridge and he couldn’t see the RAAF base far to the south. Bernie looked around at the gunnery ...
She was a clipper built for speed and few vessels could match her. A former opium runner, the Maid, as she was affectionately known, served a more respectable master these days, working the British trade routes for a wealthy merchant company. Past Cape Direction and on up the Derwent the Maid had...
But then its original charm had always been an arguable point. There were a few old-timers who recalled peaceful rolling hills, grand estates and sheep grazing in nearby Hyde Park. Others romanticised the turn of the century when the ‘larrikin pushes’ — the hooligan street gangs — pelted each oth...
He knew the instant the snake struck. A large king brown, a good six feet in length. He didn’t know how long his death would take or how much pain might accompany it, but he was aware the sight would not be pretty. ‘Get back to the homestead, Emily, and fetch help,’ he said. Quelling as best he c...
He and Ira were sitting, huddled beside the oil heater, in the parlour of the boarding house where Ira Rubenstein rented his cheap room. Both young men had successfully passed their final examinations in May and were now qualified mining engineers. Ira, however, having returned to New York to spe...
It’s just south of Rome. By the lake. Near the Pope’s summer palace. You’ll love it.’ That’s what Roland had told me. ‘Truly, Janie,’ he’d said in that rich, fruity BBC voice of his (despite being fourth generation Australian, Roland is a thorough Anglophile) ‘it’s heaven.’ Then he stretched out ...
She is following the tracks that disappear far away to the west where the desert meets the sky. She has been following the tracks for ten days now, ever since the mail truck from Coober Pedy dropped her off at Tarcoola. Very soon she will reach Ooldea. The railway tracks and the fettlers’ camps h...
He hadn’t spoken for the past several minutes and she presumed he was sulking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly, ‘I didn’t mean to be so brusque.’ Yes she had, he thought – even her apology sounded stilted. But he forgave her. ‘It’s all right,’ he replied. ‘I can understand your nervousness.’ She fe...