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The Secret River
The
Secret River is set in the early nineteenth century, on what was then the
frontier: the Hawkesbury River. William
Thornhill, an illiterate Thames bargeman and a man of quick temper but
deep feelings,
steals a load of timber and is transported to New South Wales in
1806.
Like many of the convicts, he’s pardoned within a few years and
settles on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. Perhaps the Governor grants
him the land or perhaps he just
takes it – the Hawkesbury is at the extreme edge of settlement at that
time and normal rules don’t apply. However
he gets the land, it’s prime riverfront acreage.
It looks certain to make him rich. There’s just one problem with that
land: it’s already owned.
It’s been part of the territory of
the Darug people for perhaps forty thousand years.
They haven’t left fences or roads or houses, but they live on
that land and use it, just as
surely as Thornhill’s planning to do. They
aren’t going to hand over their land without a fight. Spears may be
primitive weapons, but settlers know that they can kill a man as surely as
a ball of lead from a musket. As
he realises all this, Thornhill faces an impossible choice.
Some
of his neighbours – Smasher
Sullivan,
Sagitty Birtles -
regard the Darug as hardly human, savages with as little right to
land as a dog.
When the Darug object to being driven off,
those settlers have no compunction in shooting or poisoning them. Other
neighbours make a different choice, and find ways to co-exist with the
Darug.
Blackwood has made a family among them.
Mrs Herring “gives them when they ask”.
Hostility
between blacks and whites gradually escalates.
Finally a group of settlers decides to go out and “settle” the
Darug for once and for all.
Will Thornhill
join them? The
decision he makes is with him for the rest of his life. The Secret River plunges the reader into the experience of frontier life. What was it like – moment to moment, day by day - to have been in that situation? It doesn’t judge any of the characters or their actions, only invites the reader to ask the question, “What might I have done in that situation?” The Secret River won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature; the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction (the NSW Premier's Prize); the Community Relations Commission Prize; the Booksellers' Choice Award; the Fellowship of Australian Writers Prize and the Publishing Industry Book of the Year Award.
It was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin prize.
As well as Australasia, it has been published in the UK, Canada and the US, and in translation in many European countries.
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