AustLit

In the Australian Nullabor Desert, the men of Relay Gang No. 1 are laying rails for the largest stretch of straight railway track in the world. One day two men arrive at the camp, set in the center of the vast desert. One of them, Lofty, a tall card shark down on his luck, has the "ulterior motive" of supplementing his wages with card earnings. The other, the man from Canberra, dies of heat exhaustion a few days after arrival. Neither the gang nor the reader really knows the Canberran, but his death becomes symbolic. As each man in this isolated microcosm tries to avoid confronting his own primitive nature through elaborate fantasies or madness, the death of the Canberran takes on greater magnitude. In the remembering his death offers opportunity for guilt, blame, bravado, and a fearsome sense of mortality.(Library Journal, 1987).