Used to frighten the children and people of this town. Your body might never be found – there’s a severe lack of passing cars.īut in the middle of this landscape, amongst the cattle farms and single houses, there’s a grave where the legendary stockman is buried. Driving along a road without supplies could result in death. You’re plunged into the dry, the heat and the lack of human contact here. She is the Queen of the remote, raw and visceral Australian setting.
Susan: have loved both Jane Harper novels so far and this, the third is right up there. That piece of land had never been a cemetery the stockman had been put into the ground where he had died, and in more than a century no one had joined him.” “The name of the man buried beneath had long since vanished and the landmark was known to locals – all sixty five of them plus 1000,000 head of cattle, simply as the stockman’s grave. And then there’s the legend of the Stockman: There are cattle stations, roads to the next settlement which run for miles and miles. The Australian setting is further enhanced by the use of Australian terminology and phrases “This arvo” and words to describe the nature of the weather extra. If someone was looking for oblivion, that was the place to find it.” “ As far as he could see, the land stretched out, deep and open, all the way to the desert. This place is raw, remote, deadly and despite the heat, it’s “monstrous sky”, it can be extremely cold in many other ways. The novel plays on that isolation, explores it, creates an added layer of bleak darkness and hopelessness.
If they need something, if a cow escapes or a fence needs fixing. This is a lonely, unforgiving place, a bleak, raw place where where people live great distances from each other.
But they know it is that which controls them and their lives. The landscape is the main star of the book and the characters those who try to live in it, survive in it and try to manage. The cows preferred to wander north, where the pickings were better and trees offered shade.” The ground was typically sparse for eleven months of the years and hidden under murky floodwater for the rest. If you get lost out here without water supplies, you die: Cattle stations dot the landscape, homes are few and far between. This is not just a setting, but a landscape of dust and dryness, heat and loss of hope. The way Jane captures the landscape of the outback is like a character in itself. Travel Guide “Balamara” Queensland, Australia
0 kommentar(er)
