AustLit

Station romance set in Gippsland. Ronald Winter, Rugby-educated station manager and his brother Harry work on a station in time of drought. Ronald loves the owner's daughter Olive. He finds and saves her from a runaway horse in treacherous swampland but she is very ill with mental shock etc. He rides through a bushfire to fetch the doctor for her - but dies as he attempts to return the same way. Olive dies at the same moment, his name on her lips. Ronald dies in Harry's arms. Themes of true bravery, self-sacrifice for love, a doctor's understanding through recent loss of his own wife and child. (PB)