The year 1788: the very beginning of European settlement. These were times of hardship, cruelty and danger. Above all, they were times of conflict between the Aborigines and the white settlers.
Eleanor Dark brings alive those bitter years with moments of tenderness and conciliation amid the brutality and hostility. The cast of characters includes figures historical and fictional, black and white, convict and settler. All the while, beneath the veneer of British civilisation, lies the baffling presence of Australia, the 'timeless land'.
The Storm of Time and No Barrier complete the Timeless Land trilogy.
About the Author
Eleanor Dark was born and educated in Sydney. She published stories and verse throughout the 1920s and wrote most of her ten novels in the 1930s and 40s. Dark’s novels include Slow Dawning, Prelude to Christopher, Return to Coolami, Sun Across the Sky, Waterway, The Little Company and Lantana Lane.
Timeless Land, the first novel in the trilogy of the same name, is her best known word and received much acclaim in Australia and abroad. In the US it was a Book of the Month selection and in New South Wales and Victoria it was on the school syllabus, teaching a generation of children about the beginnings of European settlement using a fictionalised account.
Dark’s son established a residential writers’ centre in his mother’s memory at Varuna, the home in the Blue Mountains that she lived in for most of her adult life. She was appointed the Order of Australia (AO) in 1977 and the following year was given the Alice Award by the Society of Women Writers (Australia).
The year 1788: the very beginning of European settlement. These were times of hardship, cruelty and danger. Above all, they were times of conflict between the Aborigines and the…
