New South Wales is the setting for the novel’s alpine-country narrative, where environmental conditions shape daily survival and movement while colonial settlement makes access to land a political question. The high country is at once a place of dangerous floods and winter snow, a route within Indigenous seasonal life, and territory being reorganized by settlers and their institutions.

Setting and Settlement

The novel locates Everton in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, in alpine country. The place had previously been an outpost called Cresthill; its development into a town is tied to the arrival of settlers and the assertion of colonial authority. Charles Edwards promotes the outpost as a prospective town, pointing to a major stock route and the arrival of more farmers and settlers. He offers to help finance development, while insisting that Indigenous people must be managed. District leaders approve the proposal, and their decision is put into effect quickly.

The changing landscape is not simply a backdrop to this development. As white settlers take land and erect fences, Ngarigo people and their neighbours are driven from homelands and prevented from following seasonal patterns of movement. The novel connects the planned town and its stock route to a larger transformation: settlement expands by restricting Indigenous presence and mobility.

Country, Movement, and Survival

Indigenous movement through the mountains follows knowledge of seasonal conditions. Yadaka explains that when the first mist rises in the valleys, his people leave the mountain and travel north for winter, both to avoid the cold and to meet people. Danny notices that the mist has already appeared and asks why Yadaka has not left. His answer—that departure has not been possible despite his efforts—makes the seasonal route a measure of constrained freedom as well as environmental knowledge.

Colonial pressure further narrows that freedom. The narrative describes Ngarigo people living to survive and staying out of sight as land is taken and they are driven away. It also presents an unofficial permission for white people to shoot Indigenous people on sight, framing the threat as part of the system that accompanies territorial expansion. The mountains remain a route and refuge, but they are not outside the reach of that violence.

Rivers and Mountain Weather

The river demonstrates how quickly the high country’s conditions can become life-threatening. After weeks of heavy rain, floodwater rushes down from farther north, carrying a boulder more than six feet high. The rising water reaches the children while Molly is asleep; when she wakes to the rumbling and sees the danger, she pulls Delphi away from the riverbank and orders the boys off the boulders. The flood makes the river an active force in the family’s immediate struggle to survive, not a passive feature of the landscape.

Winter creates a different but equally severe test. High in the snow-covered mountains, the children press onward through snow up to their knees. Danny carries Delphi, whose lashes are rimmed with tiny icicles, while Henry James is so exhausted that he falls. The boys are close to giving up as they search for the distinctive boulders marking their destination. The scene shows how the mountains can provide passage and shelter while making that passage perilous, with the children’s survival dependent on finding their way through the terrain.

Narrative Significance

New South Wales holds two competing accounts of authority over land. Settler meetings treat the proposed town as a project of roads, farms, and law enforcement; Indigenous life is described through kinship, seasonal travel, and continued connection to homeland. The contrast makes development inseparable from displacement: the town’s proposed future depends on controlling the people already living in the region.

The state’s institutions also reach into family life. In Everton, Miss Shirley invokes the children’s mixed heritage and urges their removal; Judge Eisenmangher signs an authorization for that removal in the name of their safety. The episode brings the colonial power to classify and separate children into the same landscape where settlement has already restricted Indigenous movement. Against that official claim, the novel’s rivers, seasonal routes, and mountain crossings register the material and cultural stakes of belonging to Country.