| Australia -
during the days of early settlement in the State
of Queensland on the Tropic of Capricorn. Told in two parts, Stone Country covers the years 1868 to 1890 in an area now known as Central Queensland. Stone Country is the story of Andrew May, an Austrian Nobleman, who escapes the Law in England after participating in a duel causing death. Spirited out of England by a friend, the Austrian flees to Australia hunted by the man he thought he had killed. The Austrian lives a lie - he marries, has children and becomes a wealthy landowner. He invests in cattle and sheep, experimental refrigerated cargo-ships and later, the newly discovered sapphire mines.Over the years his life becomes entangled with Lottie, a half-caste Aboriginal child who, having been reared by German immigrant farmers, finds her life tied to her mother’s race, a white husband and sapphire mining in her search for an identity in a white world. It takes many years for the Austrian’s ‘victim’ to catch up with him. In the final show-down, death for one is inevitable. The half-caste girl’s aspirations appear to be fulfilled until the evil of racial prejudice triggers the destruction of those things she held in high esteem in the world in which she chose to live. The story moves from London to Australia; from Austria to America and Switzerland and finishes in the ruggedness of the Australian Outback. Stone Country weaves a pattern of intrigue, suspicion, love, friendship, personal fears and murderous pursuit. Tragedy and violence follow the characters through twenty years of endurance in the harsh environment that is the Tropic of Capricorn.Stone Country, with its imaginary characters, will bring these events to life with, in many instances, chilling reality. |
last UpDate: Friday, June 29, 2001 14:33:21