Death at Booroomba: The Story Behind the Story

Synopsis of Death at Booroomba

Just before embarkation in 1915 Jack O’Rourke saves an old man Sam Lomond from drowning in Sydney Harbour.  Four years later Jack – traumatised by his wartime experiences – returns to Australia to find Sam Lomond has died and left Jack his rural property Booroomba near Eden.  Puzzled, Jack travels south to see the property and discovers that Lomond was brutally murdered. Met with hostility from the local townsfolk and suspicion from the local police constable, Jack initiates his own investigation. He finds the town is full of dark secrets that range from the local to the global. As Jack struggles to expose the killer before he becomes the next victim of a decades-old conspiracy, he also battles to come to terms with the legacy of war and all that he has lost in his turbulent years in the trenches.

The novel has been described by historian Frank Bongiorno as "gifted and subtle ... combines the excitement of a murder mystery with meticulous historical research and deep feeling for the atmosphere of Australian small-town life."

Background to Writing Death at Booroomba

I’ve always been interested in history and the world developments that form the background to the story. These are not only the conduct of the First World War but also other geopolitical events such as the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 that ended the Czarist regime and replaced it with Bolsheviks led by Lenin.  Russia subsequently abandoned fighting on the Eastern Front, facilitating the transfer of more German soldiers to the Western Front - where Jack O’Rourke was fighting = and thereby affecting the Allies’ position there. Understandably there was growing concern about the spread of communism not only within Europe, but also in Australia. Under particular suspicion in Australia were the Russian exiles who were leaving Siberia via Vladivostok and Harbin with the hope of settling in Australia.

My interest in the displacement of peoples that is the legacy of war is reflected in the novels I’ve published. These range from the legacy of the frontier battles to the subsequent wars that Australia has participated in. Recently I’ve become especially engrossed in the folly that was the First World War, hence my new novel. I felt that the character of Jack O’Rourke, brave but deeply traumatized by his experiences, would make an interesting hero. He burst into the novel as if he’d always been in my head, fully formed and with a strained relationship with his father, although it did take many drafts before I was happy with the arc of his story.

The encyclopedia edited by James Jupp, The Australian People,[1] emphasizes that Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse societies in the world. This is not a recent phenomenon but has been going on for a long time. From Australia’s ancient indigenous origins to British colonisation - followed by waves of European and Chinese in the nineteenth century then international migration in the twentieth century - the encyclopedia demonstrates that Australia is home to people from all over the globe. Each new wave of settlers has had a profound impact on Australian society and culture. In Death at Booroomba I was interested not only in the Irish and English migrants but also in the movement of Russians into Australia after the various revolutions that caused such great upheaval in the Russian Empire. What effect would that have on Australian society?

At the time of the First World War, around 21% of Australia’s population was Irish, and the Irish in Australia – and in Britain – were deeply affected by the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin that was a plea for Irish home rule. Subsequently many Dublin insurgents were executed without trial by the British. This influenced the unsuccessful 1916 Australian referendum for conscription.

I also have a strong personal connection to this period through my grandparents. Both my maternal grandparents – whom I was very close to – came from large families; my grandfather was first-born and my grandmother last-born.  Both had lost brothers and uncles during the First World War. My grandfather was a stock and station agent with contacts throughout eastern Australia, and my mother, sister and I sometimes travelled with him and my grandmother. One can never drive through Australian country towns without feeling moved to tears by the sight of the war memorials and by the long lists of young men who had lost their lives, many with the same surname.

The main character of Death at Booroomba, Jack O’Rourke, grew up in West Pymble at a time when orchards thrived on the Upper North Shore of Sydney. Jack’s conflict with his father began when he made it clear he had no intention of working on the family orchard. Many decades later I attended school in West Pymble. Even at that time there was still evidence of modest farm cottages, market gardens and orchards, though that has now gone, erased by developers. It was only when I began researching the history of European occupation of the North Shore that I discovered the wonderful source of historical information about Sydney in the online Dictionary of Sydney based at the State Library of NSW, which helped me greatly in understanding Jack’s background.

I didn’t start writing Death at Booroomba until after we were emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, when people were making comparisons between the flu epidemic of 1919 and what Covid-19 was doing to the world. While my book is obviously not about the COVID pandemic, the end of the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic became important to the plot.

As part of my research for Death at Booroomba, I read memoirs and accounts of life in the trenches written by men who’d fought, and by women too who had lost their brothers and lovers and sons. While the novel isn’t specifically about the war, the protagonist is deeply influenced by his experiences on the Western Front and the dreams that come to haunt him. My research took me to many different historical sources, ranging from novels and memoirs to histories and journal articles. The Australian War Memorial website was also a valuable source of information about that period. The accounts of some of Jack’s experiences in the trenches in Chapter 14 were inspired by the posthumous papers of Arthur Graeme West, published in 1919 as Diary of a Dead Officer, and were also informed by extensive reading of many other accounts by returned soldiers of their time in the First World War. I list some of these in the acknowledgements section at the end of Death at Booroomba.

I chose to set much of Death at Booroomba in the countryside near Eden in southern New South Wales. (Readers interested in the social history of the area in which Booroomba is set in might like to read the blogs published at https://shireatwar.com/.)

I also had a personal connection to Eden. Many years ago, when I was very small, I travelled with my parents and sister to a place in the mountains not all that far from Eden.  There we stayed on the rural property of a family friend, somewhere between Towamba and Pericoe. My mother had been a student at a Sydney girls’ school, the same school that my sister and I later attended, and there she’d met many boarders from rural properties. Her closest friend came from a property near Eden in the wild mountains near the escarpment, and my mother had, as a girl, often stayed there. Although my mother’s friend had died tragically young from a nosebleed, my mother remained in contact with her friend’s mother, who invited us to visit. Her house stuck vividly in my mind.

A few years ago, my husband and I drove from our Canberra home to the countryside behind Eden to see if we could find the lovely old farmhouse. We couldn’t locate it, though we found what I think was the valley in which it was situated. It and the adjacent valleys had been taken over by the timber industry. All that remained were acres and acres of pine forests including areas devastated by logging. So badly damaged was that landscape that it put me in mind of the iconic photograph by Frank Hurley, an Australian WW1 photographer, of the Western Front.[2] (See https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/focus/frank-hurley)  

Subsequently I found that the house my parents and sister had visited and the surrounding landscape as it had once been had rooted themselves in my imagination and wouldn’t let me alone. That journey inspired my new novel. And that house was the inspiration for Booroomba.

INDUSTRY REVIEWS

‘A L Booth is a gifted and subtle storyteller who combines the excitement of a murder mystery with meticulous historical research and deep feeling for the atmosphere of Australian small-town life.’

FRANK BONGIORNO, author of Dreamers and Schemers, A Political History of Australia

‘A deftly crafted and atmospheric murder mystery with compassionately drawn characters. Highly recommended.’

NICOLE ALEXANDER, author of The Limestone Road

‘A page-turner... a remarkable historical novel.’

JULIA LEVITINA, author of The Girl from Moscow

‘An immersive historical page-turner with a well-elaborated plot containing strikingly contemporary issues.’

LUC LERUTH, author of Rumble in A Village”

SOME MEDIA REVIEWS OF Death at Booroomba

In Death at Booroomba, A L Booth employs meticulous research and deft characterization to depict the prejudice and parochialism of post-war rural Australia, where change is met with unease and wariness. Booth uses the murder of an ‘outsider’ to bring these hidden currents to the surface as suspicion and fear fracture a peaceful community. Death at Booroomba excels with detailed accuracy, genuine characters, and a fast-paced murder plot.

Books+Publishing

This historical whodunnit is satisfying on all levels, from its compelling mystery to its well-drawn portrait of post-war Australia. Booroomba is a town full of intrigue, peopled with interesting characters. There are secrets aplenty from the local – secret affairs, and arguments over water rights – to the global – sectarian divisions exposed by war and Russian immigrants who carry the scars of Tsarist and Bolshevik regimes. Jack yearns for peace and quietness, but his loyalty compels him to uncover what happened to his mate, no matter what danger it puts him in.

Good Reading

A compelling historical murder mystery set in outback New South Wales. Perfectly depicting an historical Australian town, this book has an intriguing plot that proves hard to put down.

‘Book Talk’, Canberra Weekly

AL Booth has captured the period perfectly, with a combination of measured descriptive process, and appropriate dialogue…  an elegant writer drawing on her extensive knowledge of history and her familiarity with the place where this book is set, the author has created an intriguing and substantial work of fiction.

The Canberra Bookshelf

[1] The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origin, 2^nd edition 2001. Cambridge University Press. [2] See Frank Hurley, ‘Château Wood, 1917’, Accession Number E01220 Australian War Memorial