Andrew McGahan’s novel The White Earth is set in a fictionalised version of the wheat district in which he was raised. The Darling Downs region in Queensland was named after NSW Governor Darling by Allan Cunningham, a man who is referenced in the novel. The agricultural region is dominated by rolling hills covered by pastures of many different crops including wheat, cotton and barley. Between the farmlands there are long stretches of crisscrossing roads, bushy ridges and winding creeks. The area is isolated from the city and its large farms mean the community are even further separated from each other. It is in this isolation that individuals struggle, unnoticed, throughout the novel.

Scattered across farmlands are typical station homesteads, now mostly in some stage of decay. The station homestead was essential in the establishment and survival of the Queensland pastoral industry, serving the main farming family as well as their help and station-hands. When larger farms were divided through generational changes and financial shifts, most of the physical buildings were abandoned and left to deteriorate, eventually being demolished. It is one such building that hosts the majority of the action in The White Earth.

Known as Kuran House, the homestead once loomed as a symbol of prosperity and progress. In the days of William’s (the protagonist) arrival, it is run down and barely habitable. This decay is symbolic of the changing times. The house was once the home of ‘squatters’, who came and simply claimed the land despite the presence of Indigenous custodians, then a small dwelling which grew into a large homestead, surrounded by workers huts and a chapel, like a small village, then afterward, it fell to its demise. The presence of an old manor and ruin is typical of gothic literature and McGahan’s pastoral setting suits the genre perfectly.

As the events of the novel are bound to the land, the setting is both a place and a force in the text. Physical elements like fire and drought play an integral role in shaping the narrative. Likewise, the Mabo decision, which legally acknowledged the strength of the relationship of the Indigenous people to their land, had recently opened avenues for land claims under certain conditions. Therefore the setting in this novel represents more than ‘place’ being just a background to the story. The setting can have the force of a character in the way that its very presence motivates other characters to act and react. Place, and a sense of belonging to place, is central to understanding the book and incites emotions and actions that become part of the texture of the novel.

The novel The White Earth tends to various periods of time. The primary time period in the book is 1992, the eve of the Mabo decision which stimulated anxiety and discussion among rural landowners and Indigenous communities. Woven into the fabric of the story we see another time, that of past Indigenous people and how the site was the place of their violent deaths. The violence and secrecy of the past reflects critically on the actions of pastoralist John and his friends, who assert their ‘rights’ of land ownership. The text also covers the time of emerging pastoral growth, after the initial violence, when farmers forged their own connections to the land. Relatedly, the title of the book is ambiguous in that it denotes white wheat fields, the White family who owned the property, and the concept that white people were able to acquire rights to the land, all within the context of a parallel narrative which acknowledges the immemorial spiritual connection Indigenous people hold with that very land.