Greg Barron, I take my hat off to you. I thought this was brilliant.
Whistler's Bones is a fascinating story based on the life of drover Charlie Gaunt who was one of the trial-blazing horsemen and drovers of the 1880s driving cattle across Australia into the Northern Territory to establish the vast pastoral stations of central and northern Australia.
Boy, this is a wrenching tale. Through the eyes of Charlie, it is a no-holds barred view of 'white man' life and attitudes at the time. With more than 100 years of hindsight, the attitude of those drovers and cattle barons when it came to conquering the land as well as the native Australians - some of whom increasingly opposed them - but others who assisted them, makes for compelling and confronting reading.
Charlie has all the flaws of a young man who feels immortal. What starts out as an innocence is stripped from him within years of his setting off for adventure on a horse called Constance, and Charlie does terrible things for his bosses, and out of loyalty to his colleagues, for love, and sometimes simply to survive in an unforgiving land, and his actions both shape, drive and haunt him the rest of his days.
The bulk of the story narrates a two-year cattle drive across Australia with the Durack family, and recounts the many trials of the period - malaria for the men, sickness of cattle, loneliness, stampedes, starvation, drought, and as the drove moves into its second year, more and more increasingly hostile encounters between the 'invading' cattle, horses and stockmen and the various indigenous tribes of the Northern Territory and Queensland.
Yet there is a love story at the centre of the tale too. The innocent Charlie who starts this story and for whom a great pleasure is to drink a glass of 'Creaming Soda' in a pub... is not the Charlie who becomes bitter and jealous, restless and resentful when the love of his life leaves him.
I found Charlie's loss of this innocence terribly sad. Although of course, that's life.
The descriptions of the Australian outback are breathtaking. I have travelled some of the north of the country in 1999, in a 4WD and on reasonable roads, not horseback. I've been to Lawn Hill Station and Borroloola, and I remember vividly the vast and ancient sense of the land. It was wonderful to revisit that space, colour, scent and memory of Australia in these pages.
I don't know why I don't expand my reading with more early Australian history - I really do enjoy these factual stories entwined in fiction, and I might make it a goal to read more in this time period.
Bravo, Greg Barron. Your writing is amazing.
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![Whistler's Bones: A Novel of the Australian Frontier by [Greg Barron]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51TQtVLhBgL._SY346_.jpg)
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