Cirrus@Austlit

Jane Macmanamin starts work as a domestic at the Salt Creek Hotel, an isolated frontier out-post. The first thing she witnesses is an adulterous embrace between Nellie, her employer, and Malachi Martin, a yard-hand. A week later, Nellie's husband, John Robinson is murdered. Over the course of the play the lives of Nellie, Malachi and Jane become disturbingly intertwined, a triangular relationship of love, greed, fear and desire, leading remorselessly to a tragic conclusion. As the Hotel deteriorates, and money is scarce, Malachi commits another murder in which Nellie may or may not be complicit, and Jane seems unable or unwilling to extricate herself from an increasingly perilous situation. Alongside this is a separate but related narrative, the story of a friendship, both poignant and funny, between a trooper and an aboriginal tracker, as they pursue Malachi for his crimes. Salt Creek Murders is based on the true story of a series of murders committed in the 1850s in the Coorong in South Australia.