'In 1839 John Harrington voyages 12,000 miles from Ireland into the unknown to take up a sheep-run in the southern regions of Australia. From a distinguished family of Anglo-Irish aristocrats who have fallen on hard times, the youngest son has been sent to the remotest part of the world to make his fortune. As a bulwark against the savagery and hostility of the new land, Harrington determines to build a mansion and a garden - a great and beautiful domain, a civilised refuge modelled on the estates of Europe. His chief helper in the creation of this demesne is a native Irishman, Daniel O'Leary. For twenty years Harrington prospers, but he is plagued by a sense of dislocation and loneliness in a hostile place. When he is joined by his drunken brother and his married sister, tragedy and violence ensue. There are enemies: the rapacious landowner and merchant Rutford, the wily lands commissioner Crowther, the insane missionary Stovyer, the rake Butler, the Aborigines and the land itself. And there are enemies within: disloyal staff, treachery and sabotage on the estate. Beyond the Pale is a powerful and uncompromising novel of the colonisers and the colonised. It is a story of displacement, racial brutality and treachery in an unforgiving and misunderstood landscape. It explores the wellsprings of Australia's culture.' (Publication summary)
