Kate Grenville - Sarah Thornhill

PRAISE FOR KATE GRENVILLE
ANDTHE SECRET RIVER

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

Beautifully written and compelling from start to
finish, this is a marvellous novel. The Times

Kate Grenvilles The Secret River stands out as a work of
sustained power and imagination, of poetry and insight.
No truer piece of fiction has been written about the
Australian past. PETER TEMPLE, Weekend Australian

Such is the power of Grenvilles imagination that
everything seems newly minted. Bulletin

A masterwork, a book that transcends historical fiction
and becomes something deeply contemporary and
pressingBut nothing save for pure genius can explain
the quality of this book, the extraordinaryone might
even say alchemicaltransformation of historical details
into story, language into poetry. Chicago Tribune

A profoundly important bookKate Grenville
is an extraordinary writer. Listener

Grenville is one of the very besta writer
with a rich palette and with a natural affinity
for the sensuous and the sensual. Age

A powerful illumination of the history that has
shaped uselegant prose that cuts to the very heart of her
subject matter with breathtaking precision. Vogue Australia

Superb, understated skill. Adelaide Advertiser

Magnificent. New Yorker

There is no doubt Grenville is one of our greatest
writersA book everyone should read. It is evocative,
gracefully written, terrible and confronting. And it
has resonance for every Australian. Sunday Mail

Takes us into our landscape, and into our history,
with such consummate skill that every page turns
almost too quicklya classic. Courier-Mail

This wonderful story about ownership and
identity is filled with imagery that transports
you immediately to its heart. Marie Claire

Harrowing and tremendously entertainingso moving,
so exciting, that youre barely aware of how heavy
and profound its meaning is until you reach the end
in a moment of stunned sadness. Washington Post

The wonderful Kate Grenville has excelled herself
in this piece. The Secret River is a tour de force. Ballarat Courier

A richly layered talea dramatic,
beautiful work. Scotland on Sunday

Stunning. Independent

PRAISE FOR KATE GRENVILLE
AND THE LIEUTENANT

It glows with life: imaginative in its recreations,
respectful of what cannot be imagined, and
thoughtful in its interrogation of the past. Age

Dry, exact and lush all at once, this book is
Grenville at her best. West Australian

A supremely good novel. DIANA ATHILL

Grenvilles craft is, as always, astounding, deftly
melding subject and metaphor, story and image
The Lieutenant succeeds beautifully. Canberra Times

Elegantly calibrated prosea lovely, watchful stillness: a
sort of astronomy of the human heart. Sunday Telegraph

Grenville writes with a poets sense of
rhythm and imagery. Guardian

In lucid prose and perfectly measured strides,
Grenville lays down her riveting tale. A novel
aglow with empathy, its authors capacious visions
still deliver an elemental thrill. Daily Mail

A profoundly uplifting novel. Independent

This novel is a triumph. Read it at once. The Times

ALSO BY KATE GRENVILLE

NOVELS
Lilians Story
Dark Places
Dreamhouse
Joan Makes History
The Idea of Perfection
The Secret River
The Lieutenant

SHORT STORIES
Bearded Ladies

NON-FICTION
The Writing Book
Making Stories (with Sue Woolfe)
Writing from Start to Finish
Searching for the Secret River

Notes for readers available at kategrenville.com
Teachers notes and reading group notes for Sarah Thornhill
available at textpublishing.com.au/resources

textpublishing.com.au
kategrenville.com

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William St
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia

Copyright Kate Grenville 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published by The Text Publishing Company, 2011

Cover design by WH Chong

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Dewey Number: A823.4

Primary print ISBN: 9781921758621
Ebook ISBN: 9781921834998

This novel is dedicated to the memory of Sophia Wiseman and
Maryanne Wiseman, and their mother, Rugig.

It does not follow that because a mountain appears to take on
different shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively
no shape at all or an infinity of shapes.

E. H. CARR

CONTENTS

T HE HAWKESBURY was a lovely river, wide and calm, the water dimply green, the cliffs golden in the sun, and white birds roosting in the trees like so much washing. It was a sweet thing of a still morning, the river-oaks whispering and the land standing upside down in the water.

They called us the Colony of New South Wales. I never liked that. We wasnt new anything. We was ourselves.

The Hawkesbury was where the ones come that was sent out. Soons they got their freedom, this was where they headed. Fifty miles out of Sydney and not a magistrate or a police to be seen. A man could pick out a bit of ground, get a hut up, never look back.

You heard that a lot. Never looked back.

That made it a place with no grannies and no grandpas. No aunties, no uncles. No past.

Pa started a boatman on the Thames. Then he was sent out, what for I never knew. Eighteen-oh-six, Alexander transport. I was a pestering sort of child but that was all hed ever say, sitting in the armchair smiling away at nothing and smoothing the nap of the velvet.

Thornhills was in a big way. Three hundred acres of good riverfront land and you had to go all the way up the river to Windsor before you saw a house grand as ours. Pa had got his start in the old Hope, carrying other mens grain and meat down the river to Sydney. Given that away, now he had his own corn and wheat, beef and hogs, and let other men do the carting of them.

But still a boatman at heart. Always a couple of skiffs down at the jetty, and when they put in the new road to the north he saw an opening, got a punt going. A shilling for a man, half a crown for a man on a horse, sixpence a head for cattle. Where you had people you needed an inn, so he built the Ferrymans Arms, had George Wheeler run it for him.

I never saw Pa lift an axe or carry a stick of firewood and he had other men now to do the rowing for him. Done enough work for any mans lifetime, hed say. Of a morning hed eat his breakfast, light his pipe, go out to where the men were standing with their hoes and spades. Jemmy Katter, Bob Dodd, Dickie Parson, three or four others. Assigned from Government, serving their time like hed done. Sent out from London the most of them, never seen a spade in their lives before.