Patrick White · 1957 · overland

Patrick White's 1957 novel, from the disappearance of Ludwig Leichhardt in 1848. A German with an unshakeable idea of himself raises money in Sydney to cross Australia from east to west, and takes a party inland who are not equal to it and neither is he. The other half of the book is a woman in Sydney who has met him three times and knows exactly what is happening to him.

1. 1
   Sydney

   Two years of preparation, money from the merchant Edmund Bonner, and three meetings with his niece Laura Trevelyan - after which Voss proposes by letter from the edge of the desert and she accepts, on a condition.

2. 2
   Newcastle

   The party goes north by ship and lands to ride inland, picking up an emancipated convict called Judd and a landowner's son on the way - a company assembled from people with nothing in common but a direction.

3. 3
   Rhine Towers

   Sanderson's station in the upper Hunter, green and orderly and the last comfortable place any of them will see - where Voss writes the letter that carries the only date in the whole novel, October 1845.

4. 4
   Jildra

   On the Darling Downs, Brendan Boyle's filthy shack and the last outpost of anything. They re-provision, take on the Aboriginal guides Dugald and Jackie, and Voss writes his final letter from here.

5. 5
   The interior

   Rivers in flood that destroy the stores, animals dying of thirst, a mule kick that injures Voss, and Dugald sent back with letters he meets his own people and destroys - and the party begins to come apart along its own seams.

6. 6
   The desert

   Judd takes the ones who will follow him and turns back, and the rest go on with a leader who has started to believe the country is a thing he can defeat - and Jackie, given no choice by his own people, cuts off his head.