Although English is Australia's official language, Australians use a lot of slang,
sometimes called "Strine", short for "Aw-strine"!
To give it "a burl" is to give it a try, and if you like your mysteries set in more unusual locations, here’s one for you, mate.
Part-Aborigine Emily Tempest returns to her tribal home in the beautiful wilds of Central Australia after being educated and traveling abroad in Adrian Hyland’s debut novel, Moonlight Downs, which won the Ned Kelly Award, Australia's highest crime fiction prize.
Emily is no sooner settled in when her best friend’s father, a highly respected community leader, is found strangled and missing a kidney and the bizarre nature of the crime points to the local sorcerer, Blakie Japanangka.
Author Hyland, who worked in remote Aboriginal communities, has woven Aboriginal spirituality into an intriguing tale that also touches on political issues and racial conflict between the ill-disposed "whitefellers" – who provide a lengthy suspect list after doubts arise about Blakie’s guilt – and the "blackfellers."
Included are two helpful glossaries, Australian and Aboriginal, to help you figure out what all the “blokes and sheilas” are “yabbering” about.
While you have your tent pitched in the outback, you might want to pop open a Foster’s and also try Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore.
Shaken by a scrape with death, big-city detective Joe Cashin is posted away to a quiet town on the South Australian coast where he grew up.
When a prominent local is attacked and left for dead in his own home, the evidence points to three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community – whom everyone is eager to blame.
But Cashin – who has Aboriginal cousins – is unconvinced, and soon begins to suspect that the crime is far more complex than a simple robbery gone wrong.
Author Temple is also a Ned Kelly Award winner.
