The Vanished Land is the Western District of Victoria stripped of its identity, its social elite of grazing dynasties departed for their own reasons.

The melancholic exodus has increased recently as the myriad pressures of holding inherited land have become intolerable in a nation never intimidated by ditching its past. This historic plain of fecundity demands an investigation of its ending as the home of a ruling class that for 150 years bestrode an Australia riding on the sheep’s back.