AustLit

Martin Livings, in a review in Eidolon, offers the following synopsis:

'If I were to sum up the genre of The Weird Colonial Boy, I'd have to call it an SF/humour/alternate history/romance/bush-ranging tale, sort of Monty Python meets Robbery Under Arms, with a pinch of For The Term Of His Natural Life thrown in for good measure. In essence, it describes a world where the Reformation never took place, where the British Empire still rules supreme, where Australia is still effectively a penal colony in 1978. It's a harsh reality compared to [protagonist] Nigel Donohoe's native Melbourne, a comparatively luxurious world of tropical fish and punk rock. First he must come to terms with no longer being in his own universe (I won't divulge how he managed to skip across dimensions - let's just say it involved a tropical fish, a plastic spaceship and some chicken poo), then with the imminent likelihood of no longer existing in this or any other reality.'

Source: Eidolon 13 (July 1993): pp.87-90.

'A novel of alien contact and communication through time. In the near future, an Australian theatrical producer assembles a theatre company to mount a radical, experimental production of "The Tempest" in the outback. The experiment ends in disaster, with lasting and terrifying repercussions.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.