This international award was offered by the publishers for novelists worldwide. The winners and placegetters were awarded a generous monetary prize as well as publication of their work.
'This endearing 19th-century family saga follows the lives, loves and losses of one pioneering family and two escaped convicts as they open up the land in Victoria, Australia. This classic Australian story, which won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, commands an important place in the canon of Australian literature' (Monsoon Books edition).