Children of The Earth

Children of The Earth begins c. 1850. Having bought land from a map, Adam George finds himself on a small farm cut off from Adelaide by the Mount Lofty Range and a landslide, with only his unhappy wife, Hestia, for company. Into their lonely life come the eccentric German prospector, Johannes Menge and newchum, 'Hermes', a former classics teacher, fallen from grace, and now 'a remittance man without a remittance'.

While Hestia and Hermes are poring over Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', Adam discovers a young Indigenous woman, Unatildi, injured by a fire he has kindled. These five characters weave themselves into a tangled plot in which the ancient gods of Europe encounter the ancient gods of the Australian Aboriginal Dreaming