Quagmire Gully
DECORATED WAR VETERAN Dee Jones is outraged when carbon-farmers buy neighbouring properties that were in his family for generations until drought, banks and spite forced their sale.Next to Jones’ military-neat and ordered farm in Quagmire Gully near Canberra, the carbon farmers bring piles of products that Jones says pollute the land and endanger Quagmire Gully.La Niña’s constant rain stops the piles being dug into the soil, and Jones tells the Shepherds that he will shut them down.Jones begins a hate campaign – overt and covert – enlisting people in the local village, Mortvale, to shun Dr Elizabeth Shepherd and her husband. Fences are cut, signs posted, machinery sabotaged. The local Council issues a stop notice but Elizabeth’s solicitor defeats this.La Niña’s rain stops, drought begins and Jones’ cattle break through old fences to graze in Elizabeth’s paddocks. With Jones’ encouragement, his brother trespasses to muster the cattle but the quad bike overturns, paralysing his brother. Dee blames Elizabeth for this.Elizabeth’s calves are weaned in yards next to Jones’ fence. As Elizabeth’s husband checks them late one night, Jones shoots feral pigs and kills his neighbour.Jones is suspended from his Army position. Reluctant to humble himself but needing his stock to graze on Elizabeth’s paddocks that are flourishing due to carbon experiments, Jones finally asks for forgiveness. Elizabeth does not believe this change but pities the animals and, unwillingly, lets them graze.
coming soon
Deadly Beauty
DISFIGURED AND REJECTED at birth, Bella Murphy becomes an acclaimed but reclusive botanical artist in Newtown, Sydney. Loathed by her beauty-queen mother, Angelica, the young Bella struggles against hate and bitterness as she illustrates beautiful, deadly plants and yearns for her mother’s love.Angelica’s father-in-law leaves his estate to his wife in trust for Bella, deepening Angelica’s hatred of her daughter.When Bella’s father asks for a divorce. Angelica refuses and stays in their mansion. In despair, he suicides. When her mother again refuses to move, Bella poisons her but fails. Depressed, Bella stops painting.Eventually, Bella is challenged to evict Angelica and begin painting again.Funded by an art collector, the Botanic Garden commissions a photographer to document Bella, now 26, and her work. Bella reluctantly meets the collector but he is not repulsed – his mother has a similar stain.In late January 1978, Angelica, thwarted in her advances to the photographer, is suspected of starting the fire which razes the mansion.Bella realises she does not need a huge house nor to obsess about killing her mother. Instead of rebuilding, Bella decides to build terrace houses on her land for people in need. Angelica is allowed to rent one of the houses but only if she works. Bella confides to the collector she may have her birthmark lasered off – he assures her that, whatever she does, she is beautiful.
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Breathing Slivers of Glass
LIZA YOUNG JOURNEYS from naïve passivity to necessary – but tragic – action as she, her family, friends and neighbours struggle for uncertain freedoms.Orphaned and home-schooled near Brisbane, Liza grows up in a religious sect before marrying at 18 and losing her first child at birth. Later, finding a short-lived happiness with her second husband and two daughters before moving to Sydney, Liza endures financial ruin.As Liza’s daughters marry into different cultures, she ignores her misgivings and sadness for the sake of peace, escaping into unwise relationships to deaden the pain of her husband’s death and daughters’ decisions.While Liza’s sons-in-law collude in terrorist threats to uncertain freedoms in Sydney, she rallies her friends and neighbours, including the enigmatic Brigadier Luke McQuire, to stand against oppression – but the costs of the fragile gains are too great.When her grand-daughter dies from a botched home operation, Liza begins to act, no longer able to trust almost anyone.Unwittingly, Liza enables the betrayal in which her grandson is killed. As he is buried beside his cousin, Liza hopes this will end the power grab by her sons-in-law – however, Luke McQuire warns it is just the first skirmish in a long war. #
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The Mayne Question
GEORGINA SMITH INHERITS an inner Brisbane estate, the legacy of her great-great grandfather. Opening a box of letters and papers, Georgina stumbles on an ominous confession about Patrick Mayne, centre of a never-solved gruesome mystery.Suspected of murder in 1840s Brisbane, Mayne later became a very successful businessman but he was always rumoured to have killed timber-getter Robert Cox for the money on which Mayne founded his butchering and real estate empire.Feeling he was cursed, Mayne forbade his children from marrying. Unable to have families, the two surviving Mayne children left their immense fortune to the University of Queensland, bequeathing the institution its magnificent site at St Lucia and endowing the medical school richly.Despite the rumours, the murder was never solved. Is it possible that the real killer finally confessed his guilt to the dying Mayne that Cox had been killed for his money?
coming soon