The faraway land of the house and two cows nominated for Best Non-Fiction Book!

My book THE FARAWAY LAND OF THE HOUSE AND TWO COWS has been nominated for Best Non-Fiction Book in the Able Golden Book Awards 2025!

This is the story about the community behind the making of one of Australia’s most important civic works projects in the 1890s and into the 1900s.

The faraway land of the house and two cows is a story like no other, where sewerage ghost towns really do exist. Just ask Sorrowing Father, Dear Daughter and Blackened boy, and Yankee doodle dandy that smiles with the eyes and his shadowy mate. They and other characters tell the untold and unique story of the community once living on the Metropolitan Sewerage Farm for around 100 years, alongside sewage lagoons and land and grass filtration paddocks being watered 24 hours a day with Melbourne’s sewage. Archival fact combines with memories, legendary tales and historical moments that mark time, for a story told through a timeless reality.

The Metropolitan Sewerage Farm community grew to a peak population of more than 600 in the 1950s, with over 100 homes spread across the MSF and around 100 men lived in the New Australian Camp, housing men employed from Australian migrant camps. The MSF provided job security for many men during the 1890s economic crash and 1930s depression.