In Conversation with Margaret Hickey

‘A Small Town Divided. Secrets Blown Apart'.

High on a hill above the small fictional Victorian town of Carrabeen, 300 wind turbines constantly spin. All except for one, now deadly still with a limp body hanging from one of its huge white blades.

Married Detective Sergeants Belinda Burney and Will Lovell are shocked to discover the dead man is Geordie Pritchard, a wealthy local philanthropist and owner of the wind energy farm. Suicide at first seems the likely explanation, until Geordie’s widow Lucinda insists her husband was murdered – and she has the death threats to prove it.

The controversies surrounding the arrival of the wind farm has ripped the rural town in two. Some welcome the jobs and prosperity it brings, others are enraged by the loss of farming land. So in the eyes of the locals, Pritchard was both saint and sinner. But who in this small community hated him enough to want him dead?

The natural Australian landscape is the centrepiece of all Margaret’s writing, and the focus of her creative writing PhD was on depictions of landscape in Australian literature. She has always been struck by the isolation and danger, as well as the beauty and exhilaration of her local surrounds and this is evident in An Ill Wind as we spend time in the dusty and quiet paddocks of Carrabeen.

In previous books she has depicted the harsh, relentless desert, the secretive, sodden bush, Australia’s ethereal underwater world and the mountainous High Country of North East Victoria where she lives.

Attendee price: $11.78 bookings essential incl. light refreshment, gst & booking fee. Tickets can also be purchased at the Library. More information at https://ballaratmi.org.au/talks

Presented in partnership with Collins Booksellers on Lydiard.

This event takes place on Wadawurrung Country. The Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute acknowledges the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, learn and create. Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.