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Capricornia

By: Xavier Herbert
Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
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Publisher's Summary

Here is the book that inspired Baz Luhrmann's Australia, the sweeping classic film of outback Australia. This is a true Australian classic - now available in audio for the first time.

Spanning three generations, Capricornia tells the story of Australia's North. It is a story of whites and Aborigines and Asians, of chance relationships that can form bonds for life, of dispossession, murder and betrayal.

In 1904 the brothers Oscar and Mark Shillingsworth, clad in serge suits and bowler hats, arrive in Port Zodiac on the coast of Capricornia. They are clerks who have come from the South to join the Capricornian Government Service. Oscar prospers and takes to his new life as a gentleman. Mark, however, is restless, and takes up with old Ned Krater, a trepang fisherman, who tells him tales of the sea and the islands, introduces him to drink, and boasts of his conquests of Aboriginal women - or "black velvet" as they are called. But it is Mark's son, Norman, whose struggles to find a place in the world embody the complexities of Capricornia itself.

©2009 Xavier Herbert (P)2009 Bolinda

Critic Reviews

"Big, powerful, irreverent... as timeless as the stars, as Australian as spinifex." ( Sydney Morning Herald)

What listeners say about Capricornia

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.