While reading Salt Creek by Lucy treloar I couldn’t help but think about my place in Australia as an immigrant. How do I reconcile the fact that I have benefited from the opportunities and way of life available in this country while also knowing the cost that was paid by its original inhabitants for all this to be possible? This is something I will most likely grapple with for the rest of my life.

Set in 1855 and based partly on the author’s own family history, Salt Creek tells the story of Stanton Finch and his family, including daughter and narrator Hester Finch. Stanton decides to move his family out to the Coorong peninsula in remote South Australia to try his luck at cattle farming. This harsh landscape will prove to be a difficult one to tame for Stanton, but he persists with the belief that it can become a successful endeavour, even at the expense of the local Ngarrindjeri people who ultimately pay the price for his persistence.

Our narrator Hester tells this story almost from an observer’s point of view. Often torn between her loyalty to her family’s way of life and the discomfort she feels as she witnesses the effects of European settlement on the land and it’s people and her family’s treatment of Tully, an aboriginal boy who the family befriends early on in the story but is never fully accepted and as the story progresses is seen as “one of them”.

One of the novel’s great strengths is Lucy Treloar’s ability tell us a story brimming with the harsh realities faced by many of these first European settlers while also pointing out the harsh realities faced by the Ngarrindjeri, and as a reader you find yourself torn between wanting Stanton to succeed at first but then outraged at his stubbornness and utter disregard for the original inhabitants of the land.

Another of the novel’s great strengths is the setting. A quick image search of the Coorong Peninsula will prove just how beautiful yet unforgiving this landscape can be. And I have to confess to never having heard of it before reading this book but have now added it to my bucket list of places I must visit one day. This harsh yet breathtaking landscape served as an inspiration for the story for it is where the Author’s family would holiday when she was a child.

All in all, I have to say that I deeply enjoyed this book. I would even go as far as saying that it is one of my favourite reads of all time. It is definitely an emotional ride and at the same time provides us with an account of what it may have been like to inhabit this land at the time. The prose is evocative and without wanting to speak for the author, perhaps the fact that it is slightly based on her own family history added to her emotional investment in wanting to tell this story. Whatever the inspiration, I think she produced a magnificent work.

Thanks for reading.

VISIT THE ONLINE STORE

SUPPORT THIS PROJECT ON PAY PAL

Check out the socials!

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook