East Coast Country: A North Queensland Dreaming

North Queensland’s landscape, history and culture are interwoven to create a rich mythology of place unique in Australian writing.

East Coast Country beautifully evokes the landscape, history and culture of the sugarcane region of Queensland, the adjacent islands and the Great Barrier Reef, showing the region’s distinctiveness within Australia.

Alan Frost’s beguiling writing is founded on a detailed knowledge of North Queensland history. In East Coast Country, geographical, botanical, geological and historical insights, as well as family memory and personal remembrance, are woven into a compelling and fascinating reflection. Recurring motifs connect each part of the whole; among these are Captain Cook’s 1770 voyage up the eastern coast, which brought the region to European consciousness for the first time, and the author’s journeys outwards as a child and his periodic returns as an adult.

Through this sensitive and multilayered text, Alan Frost succeeds in creating a mythology of place in a way that is unique in Australian writing.