BARRA CREEK

An outback family saga that will knock your hat off. It's funny, poignant and completely unexpected. You won't be able to stop thinking about it. Di's twelfth novel opens in New Zealand in the 1960s. The Mitchell family has run a prosperous sheep farm for generations and the youngest daughter, Sally, has just turned 20. She rides to the hounds and leads an indulged life. That is, until she shocks her parents by becoming involved with an older man. Scandalised, they try to pack her off to England, but Sally doesn't make it. After a wild spree in Sydney she's cashed in her ticket and, hell bent on adventure, takes a job as a governess on a remote cattle station - Barra Creek - in the Gulf country of Cape York. Untamed and crocodile infested, it's a land of deserts, jungles and wide rivers. Then the great stations were run by men who were loners and women who had to cope or leave. Decades later, in 2003, Sally learns a secret that will change many lives - including her own - and leave readers horrified on one hand, and smiling and crying on the other.