Review: A WORK OF ART
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 6, 2014
This is a beautifully-woven story centred on Dreaming Billabong, and the memories and associations it holds. The author creates a rich landscape of characters, with a mix of settler and aboriginal races, and slowly but surely embellishes and explains the association of the spot with Charlotte, whose ghost still wanders there. We are expertly led on a voyage of discovery concerning the events of the past in the 1880's during which Charlotte was killed, and what she had done to be remembered with such obsession or devotion; the story shifts between then and 1946, when Alan, boss of the cattle station, now an old man, recalls her, the love of his life, and still communicates with her by the billabong. Harry, Alan's grandson, also encounters her as a young girl from the past, and follows her around as an "observer of her memories". I don't want to give away too many details, but the story revolves around these unfulfilled episodes from the past, and the tragedy or outrage that was committed all those years ago, and who is to blame. I cannot stress too much the depth and clarity within the author's creation of such a rich set of characters, the interplay amongst them and the arena they exist in. She is able to sculpt an image of a rural Australian society of the bare and pioneering 1880's and of the more evolved, yet still rural society of post-war Australia with consummate skill and knowledge. One of the best indie books I've ever read.