The main relief from this is the occasional flashes of humour, sometimes observational, sometimes dry asides by the family members themselves. The same can be said for much of the family background story going back to the arrival of whites, the mission era and exploitation on farms. There is a lot of anger, angst, violence, alcohol abuse and outright thieving that goes on through this story which can be viewed as at time shocking and horrific especially when its gets onto the issue of sexual exploitation. There is a signpost event that features a crow entangled with dead snake which can be seen as a metaphor for the life space of the Salter family trying to ‘get along’ in their old house obtained through a family ATSIC connection. The loss of the money at the hands of Jim Buckley, Mayor of Durrongo and Real Estate agent (real estate agents might not like this book) sets in train events that are widespread within the extended family and community generally. Things move along swiftly when she takes her possibly anorexic nephew Donnie to swim in the river at an island that is an important focus for family history and totems (crows and bull sharks). This has been in company with her girlfriend who is portrayed as a rather incompetent thief though Kerry has a bag of liberated money with her on her beloved Harley-Davidson softail bike. It certainly gets quite crowded and like ‘Mullumbimby’ can be initially a little hard to grasp through the opening with skinny Kerry Salter escaping to her home base essentially on the run from criminal activity in and around Logan and Trinder Park. The story line, however, is very different. Once again, the landscape is important as the backstop for indigenous life and memory with all sorts of past and current traditional meanings. However, the exact location is fictional fuzzy with the gloriously named Durrongo standing in for a typical local town. The location is roughly similar with regular mentions of what seems like the Brunswick river, Bruns Heads, the Brighton beaches, Byron Bay etc. Certainly, this book has been very well received (see the BCC Lib holding above) having been awarded the 2019 Miles Franklin award, the Stella prize and on the shortlists for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the Queensland Literary Awards. I probably expected something similar this time but got a lot, lot more. I very much enjoyed Melissa Lucashenko’s ‘Mullumbimby’ as a gentle reflection on life in and around that town’s vicinity tied in with the beauties of the landscape, its very varied denizens and her Bandjalung inheritance from her mother.

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