神秘的河

William Thornhill, an illiterate Thames bargeman and a man of quick temer but dee feelings, steals a load of timber and is transorted to New South Wales in 1806. Like many of the convicts, hes ardoned within a few years and settles on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. Perhas the Governor grants him the land or erhas he just takes it - the Hawkesbury is at the extreme edge of settlement at that time and normal rules dont aly. However he gets the land, its rime riverfront acreage. It looks certain to make him rich. Theres just one roblem with that land: its already owned. Its been art of the territory of the Darug eole for erhas forty thousand years. They havent left fences or roads or houses, but they live on that land and use it, just as surely as Thornhills lanning to do. They arent going to hand over their land without a fight. Sears may be rimitive weaons, 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 imossible 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 comunction in shooting or oisoning 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 grou 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.