Beasts Of A Little Land

In 1881 Big Jim Durham an English soldier of fortune and profiteer ruthlessly creates for Elianne Desmarais his young French wife the finest of the great sugar mills of the Southern Queensland cane fields and names it in her honour. The massive estate becomes a selfsufficient fortress a caneconsuming monster and home to hundreds of workers but Elianne and its masters the Durham Family have dark and distant secrets secrets that surface in the wildest and most inflammatory of times the 1960s. For Kate Durham and her brothers Neil and Alan freedom is the catchword of the decade. Young Australians leap to the barricades of the social revolution. Rockn roll the Pill the Vietnam War the rise of Feminism Asian immigration and the Freedom Ride join forces to rattle the chains of traditional values. The workers leave the great sugar estates as mechanisation lessens the need for labour. And the Durham family its secrets exposed begins its fall from grace ...Back cover.