Have been struggling to write a review of Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow for weeks. Not sure why, but I would hate to put it down to my lack of understanding about literary fiction as a genre.
While doing research, I discovered the Stella Prize’s Book of the Month for August 2025 is Mirandi Riwoe’s 2020 historical novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain, which was shortlisted for the 2021 prize. I actually borrowed the title as an ebook back in August 2023, but for some reason did not read it… Well, I now recall why I did not read it, so I decide to borrow the ebook again to (in)validate that reason.
I am familiar with the history of Chinese migration and settlement in Australia, but mainly in Victoria, so I expect to learn a fair bit about that history in Queensland from Riwoe’s book. The author mentions in an interview about her research trip to Cooktown and Maytown in Far North Queensland, the latter of which I have never heard of. Wikipedia says it is now a ghost town on the Queensland Heritage Register, “having been active from c.1874 to the 1920s”. But, at the peak of the Gold Rush in the mid-1870s, the population there reached 19,500, with 12 hotels, 6 stores, 3 bakers, 3 tobacconists and stationers, a butcher, a surgeon, and even a lemonade factory.
I have been to the Chinese section of the Beechworth Cemetery and it feels eerie, knowing the people buried there could never truly rest in peace because they never had a chance to call Australia home. To them, this would always be a foreign land. Can this notion help me better understand the main characters and their journeys in Riwoe’s novel?
(Day 90 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 