Brandon has just graduated from university as a primary school teacher. As he travels to his first teaching post, he wonders what he’s got himself into. From the airplane, the tiny town of Gunnanilla looks no bigger than a cattle station. And when he lands, he steps into heat such as he has never encountered before. Sweating and feeling faint from the extreme temperature, he meets his new boss Mark Petersen, the racist principal of the only school for miles around. Then he meets the school’s other teacher, Mark’s wife Trina, and the students, most of whom are Australian Aborigines. Life in the small town is no picnic. In the summer, the heat is unrelenting. In the wet season, the town is cut off from the outside world and all deliveries are brought to a halt. There is only one television channel. To top it all off, there are any number of poisonous creatures around, such as snakes, scorpions, and spiders. How’s a poor city boy like Brandon, who’s interested in fashion, music, and clubbing and none too confident with his sexuality, going to cope? Enter the handsome, rough-around-the-edges miner, Frank. When Mark warns Brandon that Frank is gay, it seems this town might finally have something to keep him entertained. But how can he meet Frank without drawing attention to his own sexuality? How can anything possibly happen between them in such rough, tough, and macho surroundings?

Desert Country

The old man nodded as Fancy translated.


“Why you come and teach here?” she asked.


“I was sent here by the Education Department.”


“Me, too,” said Fancy. “We all here because of government.”


“I thought this was your land,” said Brandon.


“This all our land. Your room on our land, but government say this the place we gotta live.”


“That’s awful,” said Brandon, although as a white person what could he really say that had any validity? The entire continent of Australia had been Aboriginal land before European colonisation. Everywhere he’d ever lived had once belonged to one indigenous tribe or another. Who was he to try and empathise with the Martu?


Chapter 19