Kate Grenville · 2005 · sea

Kate Grenville's 2005 novel of convict transportation and the violent making of Australia. William Thornhill, a poor London waterman shipped to New South Wales for theft, wins his freedom and stakes out land on the Hawkesbury River. There his dream of becoming a man of property collides with the Dharug people who have lived along the river for thousands of years, and with the choices of his fellow settlers, building toward a quiet, terrible reckoning. Spare, unsparing and deeply humane.

1. 1
   London

   William Thornhill, a Thames waterman born to the London riverside, is caught stealing and sentenced to hang, then reprieved to transportation for the term of his natural life.

2. 2
   Sydney

   With his wife Sal and their children he is carried to the far end of the earth, to the raw penal settlement at Sydney Cove.

3. 3
   Hawkesbury River

   Pardoned, he takes a boat up the Hawkesbury and claims a green point of land as his own, never reckoning that it is already someone's home, until his hunger to keep it leads to a thing that cannot be undone.