Description

A laugh-out-loud, true-to-life tale of a novice cook in an outback geological camp in North Queensland, set in the 1980s. Inexperienced and pregnant, Cynthia discovers a wild world of eccentric geologists and their pig-shooting, beer-swilling field hands. She is in for a steep learning curve as she nearly sets the kitchen on fire and endures culinary disasters. The gender balance at the camp is skewed and the few women struggle to uphold their feminist values as they try to impose some order into the camp squalor. Relations between the sexes swing between mutual incomprehension and raw lust. Meanwhile, the bush mechanic prefers getting a suntan to working on the vehicles and considers getting his hair curled. The camp members are incompatible and mayhem follows when they are thrown into the unnaturally close work conditions of the basecamp.

Beyond the confinements of the camp lies 'the field' or 'God's Own Country' as the manager calls it. There are feral pigs and bush flies out there, but there is also the deep wisdom of an ancient landscape and the beauty of the bush with all its creatures. There are trail marks of long extinct organisms etched into the rocks. Coral reefs have turned to stone, evidence of great changes in climate and landmass over time. Cynthia ponders the lives of the first people to live on this land, escapes a bush fire, and befriends the locals. Petty camp squabbles sit oddly against the contemplation of deep time as she becomes aware that humans are but a speck in the the grand drama of the Earth's history and that the Earth is a place of fluid change over a time scale too massive to comprehend.

A fictionalisation based on the author's own experience, this book is a humorous celebration of human character and the wonders of the natural world.