The Secret River

Travel Guide

With the first part of the book set in and around the Thames, we see how life is tough for Will and his family and begin to see how and why such a man should be sent over to a penal colony. There’s the tanneries and the cotton mill and just the cobbled alley in Frying Pan Alley where they steal roast chestnuts from the seller there. Then how he goes around collecting dog turds ‘the pure’ as he calls them and to scrape them from the cobbles in Tyer’s Lane.

It’s when the action moves to Australia that we were most fascinated by this book and the story contained within. Life gets better for Will at this point as he starts making money and it seems to be a journey and at sometimes an unpleasant one as it draws us into the story of the settling of Australia and the problems that derive from taking land that has been occupied by natives-in this case the Aborigines.

This is the disturbing part of both the story and the book . The author does not shirk from the realities of history and doesn’t let her characters either, how ever much you might want Will and Sal to do things differently.

The family are set to inhibit and to try and conquer a new world, with a harsh hot climate and struggles with those who lived there before them.

Once freed, Thornhill finds some  land up the Hawkesbury River  and dreams of his own piece of it – and for someone who has not owned anything before or felt pride in what he has – this should give him that sense of entitlement. He doesn’t think that the land might already be owned by others – namely the aborigines.

It is the story of early Australia and is a fascinating journey