Beyond Goyder's Line

Colleen Dumaine

An outback tale of murder, mystery and love

South Australia, 1882
Eighteen year old Bethany Friend leaves Adelaide with her baker father and younger sister to reopen Farina Bakery. They travel hundreds of miles overland on dusty corrugated tracks only to be assaulted and robbed some twenty miles short of Farina.

Joseph Elliot, the former baker, had mysteriously disappeared leaving all his possessions behind. Penniless, her father bedridden, Bethany sells Elliot’s clothing and prepares to reopen the bakery. She employs Lewis Hardy the former baker’s apprentice.

Despite a culture of racial segregation, Bethany befriends Arif Durrani, an erudite Afghan cameleer. With Arif’s help, she learns how to ride a camel and explore the surrounding gibber plains and red sand dunes. Her spirited nature and Arif’s reserve makes for a contentious relationship.

A year later, Elliot’s remains are discovered. A suspect is apprehended. Bethany suspects any number of people had reason to murder the unscrupulous baker.

 

 

About the Author

An Australian teacher with a master’s degree in creative writing, Colleen has taught English in various multicultural schools around Sydney, the Northern Territory and France. Having lived overseas for eight years and travelled overland across Europe, Africa and Asia, the preference today is travelling within Australia, especially the outback where the ruins of many drought-stricken towns such as Farina can be explored.
At present, Colleen is writing a sequel to Beyond Goyder’s Line, due for release in 2023. Now living in Adelaide, Bethany is using her sleuthing skills to run a detective agency assisted by Aunt Faith and their boarder Harry Fairweather, a retired policeman. The story is set in 1894 during an economic recession and a turbulent political year for women demanding the right to vote in elections.