General News
16 June, 2024
Desert secrets revealed in Dimboola
A girl walks out of the desert, not speaking, in bloodstained clothing, barefoot.
So begins the latest release from Kiwi author Lia Hills, a book five years in the making and set entirely in the Wimmera and southern Mallee.
When this pre-teen stranger shows up literally on Beth's doorstep, the 30-something year old land regenerator and seed trader's instinct is to offer the new arrival, not questions, but shelter: shelter from the elements and from whatever trauma has left her physically ragged and emotionally mute.
Unable to continue thinking of her sudden housemate as anonymous, Beth names her "Freya".
But while Beth and her publican-friend Nate might be patient enough to give Freya time to recuperate and begin to trust, the population of Gatyekarr, in general, is more demanding.
As the mainstream media begins to circle this unidentified "desert girl", so too do the district's residents - and only some of them mean well.
An imagined settlement about an hour's drive north of Horsham, not far from Rainbow and bordering the Little Desert, Gatyekarr has the typical trappings of almost any Wimmera town.
Hills describes in detail the local pub (with its stuffed white fox on show as a trophy) and historical society (whose members are busily preparing for a back-to weekend) and the refusal of long-established family dynasties to face some uncomfortable realities from centuries past.
In this way, The Desert Knows Her Name weaves together fiction and fact, referencing real-life characters such as the Duff children who survived alone in the Wimmera bush for more than a week in 1864 and drawing on considerable consultation with the Barengi Gadjin Land Council that represents the Traditional Owners from the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk peoples on whose Country the novel is set.
Despite the immediate intrigue of its storyline, this is not a fast-paced weekend read that can be squeezed between a Saturday morning game of kids' footy and restocking the kitchen cupboards on Sunday afternoon.
Rather, it is a book to be savoured, consumed in stages, mulled over, considered and absorbed.
Hills' mystery takes its time to unwind, told in lyrically poetic language: "it's darker underneath the mallee, the light grabbed by the leaves because the day is almost finished and everything needs to eat", why silence both protects and hurts", "the sun slices itself on the leaves and turns them to glass", "dead grasses, so dry it seems the light will set them on fire when I hold them up to the last rays", "the warm grasp of the descending sun".
The Desert Knows Her Name retails for $34.99 in paperback; for those who prefer to read electronically, a Kindle version is also available.
Hills launched her book at the Dimboola Imaginarium on June 14, and will lauch it at the the Horsham CWA Hall today (June 16) at 2pm.