The Fierce Country

True Stories From Australia's Unsettled Heart, 1830 To Today

By: Stephen Orr

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Paperback | 28 June 2018 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
228 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.0 x 14.0 x 1.32

Paperback

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The Fierce Country holds no malice, but neither pity. It just sits, and bakes, and waits. We do the rest. We provoke it when we mine above its aquifers. Weaken it, and ourselves, when we leave mountains of asbestos to blow away in the wind. Misunderstand it when we see it as nothing more than a resource. Resent it when it takes our children.
The Fierce Country, perhaps, is in our minds as much as anything.

The open spaces and isolated places outside Australia's cities have unsettled us from first European settlement to today - often with very good reason.

In this nail-biting book combining the notorious and little-known, acclaimed author Stephen Orr has collected true stories that have shaped and continue to haunt the Australian psyche: mysteries, disappearances, mistreatment and murder.

Fatal conflicts between an Aboriginal tracker and the police employers hunting his community. An itinerant conman picking up tips for the perfect murder from a famous novelist around a campfire on the Rabbit-Proof Fence. A schoolteacher and her students kidnapped en masse in 1970s rural Victoria. And that fateful day when Peter Falconio pulled over beside a desert highway.

Together these tales chart an undercurrent of shifting cultural tensions as Australians find, lose and question who we are.

About the Author

Stephen Orr is the author of seven novels, a short story collection and a book of non-fiction. He writes features and occasional columns, and teaches part-time. He lives in Adelaide.

Industry Reviews

'I recommend this book for students of Australian history, for readers of non-fiction, for readers of murder and mystery stories, for anyone who just enjoys a good collection of short stories.'

Helen Eddy -- ReadPlus

'True stories of children lost in the bush, and the imaginative embellishments of them, constitute one of the core bodies of Australian narrative since European settlement. This has, and continues to be, "the country of lost children". It also might be described as "the land of unmarked graves". In The Fierce Country, an episodic gathering of "true stories from Australia's unsettled heart, 1830 to today", novelist Stephen Orr takes his title from Douglas Stewart's poem The Birdsville Track: "Three hundred miles from Birdsville to Marree / Man makes his mark across a fierce country." Or vanishes without trace.' -- Weekend Australian

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Non-Fiction Biographies & True Stories True Stories True Crime

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Non-Fiction Biographies & True Stories True Stories True Crime