Gommera Woman

Compelling reading. During the early months of 1849 on the Bathurst Plain Richard and Robert Barsden are engaged in their favourite leisure pastime of hunting emus. The Barsden brothers are the adopted sons of Esther and William Barsden. They are ruthless Australian sheep and cattle barons and nowhere is this better illustrated in their treatment of the Wiradjuri people. They despise their sister, Fuhi Barsden, who controls the adjoining property. They plot to kill her and their parents in order that they can take control of the vast Barsden pastoral and shipping empire. The reader is left with a feeling of the brutality of the harsh and unforgiving Australian colonial frontier. The reader is immediately placed in sympathy with Fuhi Barsden. Unmarried and beautiful, the reader first meets Fuhi at the occasion of Esther Barsden’s fiftieth birthday celebrations at Esther and William Barsden’s Sydney mansion. Fuhi is William’s child from a previous relationship with a Tahitian princess. Here the reader also meets Philip Gidley Barsden, Esther and William’s youngest son, who controls the Barsden shipping business. At the Sydney gathering of the Barsden family Richard Barsden suggests that the family sail together to England on a new clipper that Philip Gidley has purchased. This indeed is a fateful voyage. Fuhi must survive the voyage to revenge the deaths of her lover, brother and parents.