Sarah Gordon knows what she wants: the family homestead, Wangallon. When it comes to working the land she’s a natural but, as a woman, it’s not her birthright. Even when her beloved older brother is killed in a tragic accident, nobody looks to Sarah to inherit. Instead her grandfather passes management to Anthony Carrington, once Wangallon’s jackeroo.

Feeling betrayed, Sarah escapes to Sydney to try and put Wangallon behind her, but her heart is pulled in two directions: Sydney with its Cafe`s and social life, her blossoming career as a photographer and her accountant boyfriend Jeremy, or Wangallon, which has been in the family for over 120 years, with its floods, its droughts, the ghosts of generations past, and Anthony who is becoming as much a part of Wangallon and its future as she is.

The Bark Cutters is a gripping Australian family saga that centres around a family property. Past and present interweave in a story that traces the Gordon’s from the arrival of Scottish immigrant Hamish Gordon in the 1850’s to the life of his great granddaughter, Sarah.

Hamish Gordon deserts his family in the Scottish Highlands for the new world of Australia, where his ambition to create a great rural property ‘Wangallon’ will lead to the deaths of those closest to him. From the Victorian goldfields, he journeys north, stealing and coercing, gaining respectability through cunning. A harsh man, he irretrievably changes the lives of all who cross his path and will forge the destinies of his descendants one hundred years on. Yet in his heart he hears the voices of the past and yearns for his dead brother’s forgiveness.