Red in the Centre

Book One in the series, inspired by radio interviews collected on round-Australia jaunt for a national broadcaster; stories mostly light and bright with an amusing “innocent abroad” feel.

Beautifully rounded stories from some little-known regions of Australia.

On a remote cattle station in Far North Queensland, four gold prospectors push their luck and pay the price. Venturing too close to the homestead they attract the attention of the landholders, who arrive armed and dangerous. Only three of the prospectors make it out alive. This is the story of Bruce Schuler’s murder at Palmerville Station on the 9th of July, 2012. His murderers, Stephen Struber and his wife Dianne Wilson, had for decades been a law unto themselves, terrorising all who dared cross ‘their’ land.

Darwin longgrassers have been living large since the beginning. They come from all over the Territory to camp in the public spaces around town, to catch up with family and friends, attend health and legal matters, holiday and shop, and drink. Especially drink. And the whitefellas don’t like it. They think they’re noisy and dirty and rude. So, they try to move them on. For 150 years they’ve been trying to move them on. But the longgrassers won’t go. Yet beneath this running battle between the settled and the free lurks an undeniable truth about colonisation that is almost Newtonian in style.