The Yalda Crossing

By Noel Beddoe

A powerful novel about Australia's frontier history, the story follows a successful trader and merchant in Sydney in the late 1870s. “Young James” Beckett believes he has put his past behind him, but when the enigmatic bushman Lancaster reappears in his life, he is forced to confront the haunting truth of his early years. In 1832, Young James and his father, the Captain, arrived in New South Wales and set out with a group of convicts and a guide, Lancaster, to claim property on the Morrombidgee River in Wiradjuri country. As land opened up for further settlement, more whites arrived and the delicate balance that was in place between the Beckett family and the Wiradjuri people was shattered. What happened next was so shocking that it has tormented Young James for life, and it is only his chance encounter with Lancaster decades later that provides the final clue to those terrible events. Based on Australia's first contact history, this is a gripping adventure about the desperate battle for land and its dreadful consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780702248337

Reviews for The Yalda Crossing

[lesleynicol · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After hearing the author give a very interesting talk at the Thirroul Readers and Writers Festival, when he told the story of how he came to write this book, I determined to read it.This is a wonderfull, well written work of historical fiction which tells the true story of the massacre of the Wiradjuri people in the Murrumbidgee area of NSW. in 1842. The story is told from the viewpoint of the son of a fictional pioneering family in the district and his father who felt himself to be justified in exterminating these people. The family took up land which had been occupied by the W.people for centuries, They did him no harm, but they were in his way. The episode has a very marked effect on the boy and troubles him for the rest of his largely successful life after leaving his family. I must say that after reading this book, it also troubles me.