It’s Raining In Mango:  Pictures from the Family album.

This book traces a family’s story from the 1860s to the 1980s.  Cornelius Laffey is an Irish-born journalist who moves his family from the relative comforts of Sydney to the North Queensland of the gold-rushes.  Here they confront privations and the horrors of Aboriginal dispossession, and Cornelius is ultimately sacked for his reporting of the killings.

In Astley’s story-telling we are brought back time and again to the imperfection of the human condition:  the blustering Cornelius, the sullen Nadine, the philandering Harry, and perhaps most poignant of all, the solitary and troubled Will.  Interwoven so expertly through each of their stories are some of the recurring themes of life.  Racism and colonial dispossession, the tragedy of war and poverty, the subjugation of women and the patriarchal nature of religion.

At the close of the book we find Reever shouldering his swag and heading north.  A powerful reminder of how each generation  must repeat the cycle of those who have gone before.

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