The Burning Land
That land out there has been burning me as long as I can remember. All these years I’ve been getting ready for this moment. I’m going out there to take hold of it…
Raised by struggling Scottish immigrants in the sparsely inhabited mountains of the Port Phillip District, Matthew Curtis dreams of the vast unexplored spaces of inland Australia.
Defying his stern foster-father, he leaves home — and the warm grey eyes of Catriona Simmons — at sixteen. His journey takes him first to the brawling life of the goldfields with the beautiful Janice Honeyman, then north into the burning wilderness of the unexplored outback.
An engrossing historical saga in the tradition of Evan Green and Wilbur Smith, The Burning Land bursts with life and the passion and daring of Australia’s pioneers.
With love to Caroline, Paul and Rebecca.
CONTENTS
About The Burning Land
Dedication
Maps
Book One: The New Land
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Book Two: The Run
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Book Three: Gold
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Book Four: Westward
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Book Five: Homecomings
Thirty-Nine
Author’s Notes
Acknowledgements
About John Fletcher
Also by the Author
Copyright
Australia was created by the questing spirit of man, forever pushing out into the wilderness. We who live within the cities and ordered society of this land have within us the tribal memory of those forerunners who led us inexorably onwards. Few of us would be capable of doing what they did; fewer still actually go out there and try to follow in their footsteps. But in our spirit we follow them. They are, inescapably, as much a part of us as we, remembering their dream, are a part of them.
Male: above velvety black, basal two-thirds of both wings brilliant metallic blue.
Description of Papilio ulysses joesa Butler, known commonly as the Ulysses butterfly.
Book One
It is not to be doubted, that a Tract of Land such as New Holland would furnish Matter of advantageous Return.
Sir Joseph Banks, 1779
Hot sunlight lay yellow upon the moored ships and the waters of the cove; the wharf thronged with bustling, shouting men. Lorna McLachlan stood on the deck of the three-masted barque Mary, one hundred and twenty-three days out of London, and watched as sweating longshoremen secured the hawsers connecting the ship to the shore at the end of its eleven thousand mile journey.
The waiting passengers surged forward. Lorna took her husband’s arm, her full black skirt swaying about her legs as she did so. The skirt and matching black jacket, fitting snugly to her hips, and the high-necked white blouse in plain cotton were uncomfortable in a climate far hotter than that for which they had been designed. Her blonde hair, pulled back off her forehead in a tight bun, was partially concealed beneath a black bonnet with a deep crown and rounded brim set four-square on her head. Andrew McLachlan, a stiff, hard Presbyterian whose life had been ordered from birth by the Bible, or his own interpretation of it, was not one for frivolities and took it for granted that his wife would follow his lead in this as in all things.
Andrew turned at her touch. At thirty-one he was ten years older than she. They were of a height although she was not particularly tall. She did not need to raise her head for her blue eyes to look into his hazel ones but in every other way she looked up at him, with respect and some fear, for Andrew McLachlan was an intolerant man although not a violent one.
He smiled austerely. ‘Landfall at last,’ he said in his broad Scots accent. ‘Praise the Lord. Now mebbe we can make a start.’
‘Aye,’ Lorna said, ‘Mebbe we can.’
She looked past his shoulder. Moored ships raised a forest of spars against the blue sky. Buildings—brown wood, yellow stone—huddled along the water’s edge or straggled up to the crest of the low hill that rose behind them. On the other side of the cove a large warehouse faced the water. Its cargo bays stood open, its interior hidden in shadow. Scurrying figures carried bales and barrels into the recesses of the building. The merchant’s name was painted in large white letters on the iron roof. THORNTONS. The name meant nothing to her.
Lorna turned. Beyond the waters of the harbour the blue-grey land stretched away, enigmatic and silent. New South Wales, she thought without pleasure. She feared the prospect of life in this unknown place but took care not to let her husband see her fear.
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