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The Night Parrots
1922. In the remote Australian outback, Pastor Martin Gerlach's health fails. With no way in or out of his mission, his family and friends devise a plan to move him to the railhead at Oodnadatta. His son, fourteen-year-old Benjamin 'Benno' Gerlach, helps organise a cart and supplies and, along with his mother, the schoolteacher Ignatz Beck, Blind Silas and Jamy, the journey into uncertainty begins. All the time, Benno is forced to move beyond childhood as he faces the loss of his father, as he finds ways to articulate his love, and faith, and navigate a landscape of fire, flood, and his own secret fears.
450 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2026
About the author
Stephen Orr
20 books32 followersStephen Orr is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. His works are set in uniquely Australian settings, including coastal towns, outback regions and the Australian suburbs. His fiction explores the dynamics of Australian families and communities.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 10, 2026
South Australian Stephen Orr is the author of many outstanding novels so it's hard to be objective, but I think that he has surpassed himself with his latest novel The Night Parrots. His magnum opus...
Readers with long memories will remember Giramondo's 2015 reissue of T G H (Theo) Strehlow's 1969Journey to Horseshoe Bend. It was a spellbinding book, an account of the epic journey taken by the Lutheran missionary Carl Strehlow in 1922. Travelling upright in a chair on the back of a horse-drawn buggy, and accompanied by his fourteen-year-old son Theo in a van drawn by donkeys, Strehlow and his wife Frieda Keysser struggled for twelve days in the relentless heat across the dry bed of the Finke River in Central Australia to get medical help.
In my review, I noted that Theo's not entirely reliable chronicle covered the journey with all its tribulations; the history of the pastoral industry and the mission at Hermannsburg; Aboriginal myths and legends about the landscape; and Biblical stories, notably the story of Job. In The Night Parrots Stephen Orr has scaffolded elements of Theo's coming-of-age in this astonishing road journey to create a magnificent novel that explores truth and memory and the contested history of 20th century outback missionary activity.
Always presented from Benno's conflicted point-of-view, the narrative weaves seamlessly between the situation in 1922, with a backstory that begins with Gerlach's decision to leave his other children in Leipzig while he takes up missionary activity in remote Outback Australia; and Benno's present as an 80-year-old man estranged from his own family, with a back story that includes his visits back to Hermannsburg as a patrol officer and a failing marriage. I did not consult my copy of Journey to Horseshoe Bend to trace how faithful Orr's novel is to Theo's original account which I read over a decade ago; I read The Night Parrots entirely on its own terms although I knew from the outset that the pastor did not survive his ordeal.
Orr's choice of narrative voice is sheer genius. In the original, as I noted in my review, Theo's account of a traumatising event that shadowed his entire life is complicated. He had axes to grind and he had justifications to pursue. But Benno in The Night Parrots is as elusive as those critically endangered birds are. His perspective as a fourteen year old breaks in the same way that an adolescent voice breaks: at times he has astonishing maturity and a depth of perception beyond his years and at other times he is petty, childish, resentful and terrified by the impending loss of his father. He observes his parents' marriage with the tenacity of a divorce court judge. He is ever alert to their assessments of him: he yearns for acknowledgement of his usefulness on the journey but they are not the kind of parents that lavish praise or encouragement. Reading between the lines, Benno is a boy who has never reconciled with his parents' decision to abandon his siblings in Germany, and he feels the weight of their expectations in making him The Chosen One.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/06/10/t...
Readers with long memories will remember Giramondo's 2015 reissue of T G H (Theo) Strehlow's 1969Journey to Horseshoe Bend. It was a spellbinding book, an account of the epic journey taken by the Lutheran missionary Carl Strehlow in 1922. Travelling upright in a chair on the back of a horse-drawn buggy, and accompanied by his fourteen-year-old son Theo in a van drawn by donkeys, Strehlow and his wife Frieda Keysser struggled for twelve days in the relentless heat across the dry bed of the Finke River in Central Australia to get medical help. In my review, I noted that Theo's not entirely reliable chronicle covered the journey with all its tribulations; the history of the pastoral industry and the mission at Hermannsburg; Aboriginal myths and legends about the landscape; and Biblical stories, notably the story of Job. In The Night Parrots Stephen Orr has scaffolded elements of Theo's coming-of-age in this astonishing road journey to create a magnificent novel that explores truth and memory and the contested history of 20th century outback missionary activity.
Always presented from Benno's conflicted point-of-view, the narrative weaves seamlessly between the situation in 1922, with a backstory that begins with Gerlach's decision to leave his other children in Leipzig while he takes up missionary activity in remote Outback Australia; and Benno's present as an 80-year-old man estranged from his own family, with a back story that includes his visits back to Hermannsburg as a patrol officer and a failing marriage. I did not consult my copy of Journey to Horseshoe Bend to trace how faithful Orr's novel is to Theo's original account which I read over a decade ago; I read The Night Parrots entirely on its own terms although I knew from the outset that the pastor did not survive his ordeal.
Orr's choice of narrative voice is sheer genius. In the original, as I noted in my review, Theo's account of a traumatising event that shadowed his entire life is complicated. He had axes to grind and he had justifications to pursue. But Benno in The Night Parrots is as elusive as those critically endangered birds are. His perspective as a fourteen year old breaks in the same way that an adolescent voice breaks: at times he has astonishing maturity and a depth of perception beyond his years and at other times he is petty, childish, resentful and terrified by the impending loss of his father. He observes his parents' marriage with the tenacity of a divorce court judge. He is ever alert to their assessments of him: he yearns for acknowledgement of his usefulness on the journey but they are not the kind of parents that lavish praise or encouragement. Reading between the lines, Benno is a boy who has never reconciled with his parents' decision to abandon his siblings in Germany, and he feels the weight of their expectations in making him The Chosen One.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/06/10/t...
July 4, 2026
3 1/2. I wanted to like this book more than I did, perhaps my expectations were too high. Interesting account but light-on (for me) with the accounts of the missionary experience, aboriginal interaction and the strains of living remotely. Maybe this is because it was being written from the point of view of a 14 year old?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews