THE MAKING OF MARTIN SPARROW… During the Hawkesbury’s Great Flood
Join Hawkesbury Central Library for a morning with Australian author Peter Cochrane on Tuesday, 10 July from 10:30 am to midday, as he discusses his first novel The Making of Martin Sparrow.
Martin Sparrow is already deep in debt when the Hawkesbury’s Great Flood of March 1806 lays waste to Martin and his farm. His 30 acre farm is all but washed away, confronting the former convict with a choice: buckle down and set about starting again, or heed the whispers of an earthly paradise on the far side of the mountains and strike out for a new life.
Set against the awe-inspiring immensity of the hinterland west of the Hawkesbury River, this is a story of chance and endurance, an immersion into another time, and a masterpiece of language and atmosphere.
Peter Cochrane is a widely published historian and writer based in Sydney. He is best known for his book Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy, which won the inaugural Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History and the Age Book of the Year in 2007. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
