The winter road: a story of legacy, land and a killing at Croppa Creek

© 2021 Black Inc. Carlton, Vic

 

They shoot horses, don’t they?

A non-fiction account of the cold-blooded murder of a government official by a wealthy landowner who applied regional Australia’s time-honoured ‘might is right’ principle as against adherence to the rule of law. The landowner in question took rural Australia’s prevailing belief that the land had to be cleared of its first inhabitants as well as brigalow to its logical conclusion: the landowner can not only bulldoze the bush if he so wishes but can rid himself of any perceived impediment to his profit margin.

The author puts us in the picture concerning the historical context – John Locke’s Enlightenment philosophy of private ownership of land as against Thomas Paine’s – of this widespread belief and its leading to the Croppa Creek murder but strings the story out unnecessarily. Worse still, there’s no index.