In 1880, at the age of fifteen, Charlie Gaunt left his home in Bendigo and signed on as a drover with Nat Buchanan. Two years later he was a key man on one of Australia’s greatest cattle drives – the Durack family’s epic journey from Cooper’s Creek, Queensland – to the Kimberley.

Drawing on Charlie’s largely unknown story, and filling in the gaps with fiction, the author has created a novel unique in Australian literature. An unprecedented adventure, and a passionate love story – Whistler's Bones is both a celebration of the good things in the settlement of Northern Australia – and a damning indictment of the bad.