The Secret River

A Thames waterman, transported for theft, lands in the raw penal colony at Sydney Cove and then takes up land sixty kilometres north on the Hawkesbury River. The map runs from The Rocks up to Wisemans Ferry and the reaches of the lower Hawkesbury, called Dyarubbin by the Darug people whose country the settlers were seizing. The frontier violence in the book is drawn from the documented history of these reaches.

William Thornhill

Sydney Cove

Part 1

The waterman and his family reach the far side of the world as convicts, rowed ashore at the small cove where the penal colony began. After a life on the Thames, he faces a strange harbour, unfamiliar light and the prospect of earning a pardon at the edge of the known world.

Part 1, the arrival in New South Wales

explicit The novel names Sydney Cove as the place of arrival; this marks the head of the cove, the landing point of the early colony.

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William Thornhill

The Rocks

Part 1

On the rocky western shore of the cove, the family scrapes a living carrying cargo on the harbour while he works toward his freedom. This crowded, muddy quarter of the young town, built on land the Cadigal called Tallawoladah, is where he first dreams of holding ground of his own.

Part 1, the years in the colony

explicit The Rocks, on the western side of Sydney Cove, is named as the quarter where the family lives and works; sited at the centre of the historic precinct.

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