At the age of fifteen, Charlie left his home in Bendigo and signed on as a drover with Nat Buchanan. Two years later he was a key man on one of Australia's greatest cattle drives - the Durack family's two-year journey from Cooper's Creek, Queensland - to the Kimberley.

Stumbling on Charlie's largely unknown story, and filling in the gaps with fiction, the author has created a novel unique in Australian literature. An unprecedented adventure, and a passionate love story - Whistler's Bones is both a celebration of the good things in the settlement of Northern Australia - and a damning indictment of the bad.