Steve Brown's Bunyip, and Other Stories

These are rough, funny tales from the Australian bush, where the land is as wild as the people who live in it. Steve Brown is the kind of man other bushmen respect but wouldn't turn their back on, a dubious and scheming rogue who talks big and cuts corners at every turn. When he claims to have encountered a fearsome bunyip in the outback waterholes, we're right to doubt his account, but that uncertainty only makes the story richer. Barry's collection captures a Australia that rarely appears in polite literature: harsh, comic, and deeply strange. The characters are flawed, stubborn, and often ridiculous, yet somehow sympathetic. Beneath the humor runs a current of genuine unease, as if the ancient bush still holds secrets that outsiders will never quite understand. These stories endure because they refuse to sentimentalize the frontier while still finding something like love for its impossible characters.