Last Days of the Cross recounts the trials and adventures of young Joseph having departed the shores of Blighty, bound for the care-free beaches of Australia and literary greatness. Instead he finds himself living in a dosshouse amidst the ramshackle decadence of Sydney’s red-light district, falling in love with a junky aborigine girl called Rosie who robs him blind and periodically leaves him to wallow lovelorn amongst bottles of rot-gut wine, porn cubicles, and peeping toms. The twin struggles of finding love and writing his literary masterpiece propel the book through picaresque encounters with addicts, lecherous spinsters, and the eternal evils of the landlord and the boss.