Wresting his family from the easy living of 19th-century Sydney, Cornelius Laffey takes them to northern Queensland where thousands of hopefuls are digging for gold in the mud. They confront the horror of Aboriginal dispossession, and Cornelius is sacked for reporting the slaughter. An unforgettable tale of the other side of Australia's heritage.

Wresting his family from the easy living of nineteenth-century Sydney, Cornelius Laffey takes them to northern Queensland where thousands of hopefuls are digging for gold in the mud. They confront the horror of Aboriginal dispossession, and Cornelius is sacked for reporting the slaughter. This is an unforgettable tale of the other side of Australia's heritage.

Details

ISBN13: 9780143204749
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 240
Edition:
Publication Date: 28 Jun 2010
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Publication City, Country: Hawthorn, Australia
Dimensions (cm): 18(H)x11.1(L)x2(W)136
Weight (gm): 136

Author Biography

Australian writer Thea Astley (1925-2004) published seventeen novels and more than a dozen free-standing short stories. She studied arts at The University of Queensland and held a position as Fellow in Australian Literature at Macquarie University until 1980, when she retired to write full time. In 1989 she was granted an honorary doctorate of letters from The University of Queensland. Astley lived and wrote on the New South Wales south coast until her death in 2004. Astley won the Miles Franklin Award four times - in 1962 for The Well Dressed Explorer, in 1965 for The Slow Natives, in 1972 for The Acolyte and in 2000 for Drylands. In 1989 she won the Patrick White Award. Other awards include the 1975 Age Book of the Year Award for A Kindness Cup, the 1980 Australian Literature Studies (ALS) Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple, the 1986 ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters, the 1988 Steele Rudd Award for It's Raining in Mango, the 1990 NSW Premier's Prize for Reaching Tin River, and the 1996 Age Book of the Year Award and the FAW Award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow.

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