THE BOOKS

Roger Dobinson, a younger son of an English landed family, whose appetites and spending capacity were greater than his ability to make money, left England to make a fresh start. Ultimately the family arrived at an abandoned settlement on the south coast of Western Australia only five years after the first settlement of 1829. Within two hours their ship set sail for Albany, and they watched her as she moved slowly out of the harbour into the Southern Ocean; all eyes followed her till she disappeared entirely from view. They were completely alone. Roger was accompanied by his two young sons William and Edward. Since the death of his wife in childbirth, his widowed sister-in-law Alice had moved in to care for the boys and her grieving brother-in-law. They were joined later by a younger sister-in-law, Jenny, whose elderly husband had drunk himself to death. From another world four rebellious sailors, after a routine flogging, were forced into a rowing boat by the skipper of a whaling ship. Having endured a perilous journey across the Southern Ocean, they came ashore desperate for food and water. Landing on an almost deserted coastline they had the good fortune to find a river and an isolated settlement.