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

Jenny’s husband, the police officer, snatched the hose away from Jimbo and proceeded to give him a second drenching. It was all too much for Trina, who got up in a huff from her chair, looked at Brandon as she flicked the water off her hands and said, sarcastically, “Lovely.”


She walked back to the house, looking most unimpressed. As she was climbing the back steps someone sprayed her with the hose, leaving a long wet streak down the back of her dress. She looked over her shoulder and from the top step told those men struggling to win possession of the hose to “Grow up!”


Brandon couldn’t stop laughing. Even after a burst of water hit him in the face and he nearly fell off his chair trying to escape it, he was laughing. He fell onto the grass and only by chance did he catch Katy getting a good dousing. Her blonde curls hung down like broken Slinkies over her face, which couldn’t have looked more shocked.


“My hair,” she groaned. “My hair. I’ve just washed it!”


Chapter 34