When I started this book, I was reminded of my initial reaction to Peter Carey’s Illywhacker, still my favourite of his works – both are big and ambitious and suspend reality. There the similarity ends. This book brims with characters eccentric and fabulous who will stay with you long after you’ve finished.

Young Sarah Hutchinson is sent by her estranged parents to live with her eccentric uncle Ferny, an enthusiastic polymath, on his farm somewhere near Aireys Inlet on Victoria’s surf coast. It’s the early 1900s and Sarah, an aesthete and musician, is entranced by her uncle Ferny and his bohemian ways – her banishment is no punishment at all.

Together they encourage each other and share lovers. Ferny organises musical soirees to display Sarah’s musical predilection, and Sarah encourages Ferny’s passion for Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life. Together they indulge their mutual admiration for young Red Whiskered Joe.

The efforts by some local notables to install a bell in the community to chime the hours and celebrate holy days, to civilise the landscape, is greeted with some skepticism by Ferny. A sinister campaign is then mounted to intimidate him. The push for the bell is, for Ferny, emblematic of the desire to change and destroy the natural environment, and to deny the injustices against the original inhabitants. This is a big, bold work: lyrical, powerful, challenging and rewarding.