The Burke and Wills saga stands like a unique geological formation on the landscape of Australian history – intriguing, compelling and mysterious. In The Barrier Range, Ray Liversidge approaches this landmark from a fresh and imaginative direction, creating a parallel universe in which the stories of Burke, Wills and other early explorers co-exist with MP3 players, television and the Number 19 tram. Like the expeditions it echoes, this is daring and epic in scale.
- Alan Attwood, author of Burke’s Soldier
In this book, Ray Liversidge experiments with the boundaries between prose and poetry, interweaves quotation and imagination, and steps outside convention by placing himself within the exploration narrative as a character on a quest to find his lost uncle. The Barrier Range challenges accepted notions on several levels as it examines the concept of exploration as both physical and psychological journey.
- Susan Kruss, author of Calico Ceilings
Words dropping slowly and singly into place on a big empty page suits my sense of the thinking patterns of people in the Australian interior – especially people who are slowly realising they are doomed. Reading The Barrier Range made me feel like I had been out there in the centre.
- Martin Flanagan, author of In Sunshine or in Shadow
[...] Broken Hill on their ill-fated trip through the desert to the Gulf of Carpentaria. You can read praise for The Barrier Range and read [...]