Cirrus@Austlit

'Mary Cameron was self-confident, an aspirant writer and feminist - but she also took with her white muslin for a wedding dress; and she married a near illiterate shearer William Gilmore. Their socialist dream foundered before very long and they had to earn their passage home with their baby son - through the impossibly remote country communities of Paraguay and the vast estancias of Argentina to Patagonia, the 'end of the earth' made famous by Darwin and Bruce Chatwin. Anne Whitehead brilliantly counterpoints her own wanderings with Mary's. After seven years in South America the Gilmores sailed home. Poet and national icon, Mary Gilmore's portrait now graces the Australian USD 10 note.' (Publication summary)

'Winner 1998 NSW Premier's Australian History Award. Also shortlisted in the 1998 Kibble and Dobbie Awards, and the 1997 Age Book of the Year selection. "An erudic, beautifully researched work of history which knits together the stories of Paraquay and Australian emigration as a quest for Utopia." Judges' comment - 1998 NSW Premiers Award. In the 1890s a brave band of ordinary Australians sailed out through Sydney Heads, to found a socialist Utopia in South America. Under the charismatic William Lane, over 500 settlers created a "New Australia" in the Paraguayan jungle. Their hopes soon collapsed in turmoil. many, including Mary Gilmore, returned home. Others stayed on wit their families, learning Spanish and the Indian language and becoming part of the culture of their adopted country. These descendants of socialists also endured the longest surviving right-wing dictatorship in the Western hemisphere.' (Publication summary)