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The Making of Martin Sparrow
A devastating flood on the Hawkesbury almost wipes out the young colony, bringing to the surface many secrets and desires in this masterpiece of historical fiction.
Colonies are built on dreams, but some dreams threaten ruin.
Set against the awe-inspiring immensity of the hinterland west of the Hawkesbury River, this epic of chance and endurance is an immersion into another time, a masterpiece of language and atmosphere.
Ex-convict Martin Sparrow is already a lazy, lovelorn and deep-in-debt failure when his farm is wrecked by the great flood of March 1806.
In the aftermath he is confronted with a choice. He can buckle down and set about his agricultural recovery, or he can heed the whispers of an earthly paradise on the far side of the mountains – a place where men are truly free – and strike out for a new life. But what chance does a ditherer such as Sparrow have of renewal, either in the brutal colony or in the forbidding wilderness?
The decision he makes triggers a harrowing chain of events and draws in a cast of extraordinary characters, including Alister Mackie, the chief constable on the river; his deputy, Thaddeus Cuff; the vicious hunter, Griffin Pinney; the Romany girl, Bea Faa; and the young Aboriginal men, Caleb and Moowut’tin, caught between war and peace.
Rich, raw, strangely beautiful and utterly convincing, The Making of Martin Sparrow reveals Peter Cochrane – already one of our leading historians – as one of our most compelling novelists.
Colonies are built on dreams, but some dreams threaten ruin.
Set against the awe-inspiring immensity of the hinterland west of the Hawkesbury River, this epic of chance and endurance is an immersion into another time, a masterpiece of language and atmosphere.
Ex-convict Martin Sparrow is already a lazy, lovelorn and deep-in-debt failure when his farm is wrecked by the great flood of March 1806.
In the aftermath he is confronted with a choice. He can buckle down and set about his agricultural recovery, or he can heed the whispers of an earthly paradise on the far side of the mountains – a place where men are truly free – and strike out for a new life. But what chance does a ditherer such as Sparrow have of renewal, either in the brutal colony or in the forbidding wilderness?
The decision he makes triggers a harrowing chain of events and draws in a cast of extraordinary characters, including Alister Mackie, the chief constable on the river; his deputy, Thaddeus Cuff; the vicious hunter, Griffin Pinney; the Romany girl, Bea Faa; and the young Aboriginal men, Caleb and Moowut’tin, caught between war and peace.
Rich, raw, strangely beautiful and utterly convincing, The Making of Martin Sparrow reveals Peter Cochrane – already one of our leading historians – as one of our most compelling novelists.
512 pages, Trade Paperback
First published April 30, 2018
12 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Peter Cochrane
28 books4 followersPeter Cochrane’s writing about war includes the award-winning Simpson and the Donkey: The Making of a Legend; the companion volume to the ABC TV series Australians at War; and two studies of wartime photography, The Western Front, 1916–18 and Tobruk 1941. Cochrane is also the author of Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy, which won the Age Book of the Year award and the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, and two works of fiction: the novella Governor Bligh and the Short Man and the recently published novel The Making of Martin Sparrow.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 18, 2018
The Making of Martin Sparrow is a cracker of a good read, no tricks or gimmicks, just brilliant storytelling.
As historian Peter Cochrane's first novel, you would expect the historical details to be note perfect, which they are, but never in a 'look at my research' kind of way. Every tiny detail serves the story.
And what a story! A full cast of colourful and flawed characters, unexpected turns, grisly deaths and majestic surroundings, beautifully written and thoroughly entertaining.
Many of the hallmarks of the western genre are here - lawlessness, retribution, the unknown frontier - but the setting is unique. The areas now known as Wollemi National Park and the Gardens of Stone National Park defy description with their epic grandeur and inhospitable menace. I highly recommend searching out some images online to enhance the reading experience.
As historian Peter Cochrane's first novel, you would expect the historical details to be note perfect, which they are, but never in a 'look at my research' kind of way. Every tiny detail serves the story.
And what a story! A full cast of colourful and flawed characters, unexpected turns, grisly deaths and majestic surroundings, beautifully written and thoroughly entertaining.
Many of the hallmarks of the western genre are here - lawlessness, retribution, the unknown frontier - but the setting is unique. The areas now known as Wollemi National Park and the Gardens of Stone National Park defy description with their epic grandeur and inhospitable menace. I highly recommend searching out some images online to enhance the reading experience.
December 13, 2018
In 1806 the Hawkesbury River had a once in a hundred years flood killing five people and ruining many farms. This event forms the grizzly background to a grizzly story of the early white settlers of this area.
The tale of Martin Sparrow and his forlorn hope of a better life over the mountains. There is every type of death faced by the people of this area of Australia - murder, genocide, shark attack, execution, gored by a wild boar, drowning. So many died I was surprised that there were still characters standing by the end. Other forms of Australian dangers were also covered - snakes, spiders and even the venom from a platypus.
Surprising for a book of this period the three police in the story were all good people and the persecuted (Aborigines and women) were treated with respect as the victims there were.
The frequency of deaths and the constant scenes of various groups of people somehow running into each other within the Australian bush kind of took the sheen of a potentially very good book on Australian infamous past.
The tale of Martin Sparrow and his forlorn hope of a better life over the mountains. There is every type of death faced by the people of this area of Australia - murder, genocide, shark attack, execution, gored by a wild boar, drowning. So many died I was surprised that there were still characters standing by the end. Other forms of Australian dangers were also covered - snakes, spiders and even the venom from a platypus.
Surprising for a book of this period the three police in the story were all good people and the persecuted (Aborigines and women) were treated with respect as the victims there were.
The frequency of deaths and the constant scenes of various groups of people somehow running into each other within the Australian bush kind of took the sheen of a potentially very good book on Australian infamous past.
June 30, 2018
‘Colonies are built on dreams, but some dreams threaten ruin.’
Martin Sparrow, a convict expiree, is already deep in debt, dithering and drifting through life when the flood on the Hawkesbury River hits his farm in March 1806. Will he rebuild, with all the hard work that will entail? He’s heard of a paradise on the far side of the mountains, a place where men are truly free. To get there, Martin Sparrow needs to pay a toll. Choices always have consequences: who else will be caught up in Sparrow’s choice?
There are more than forty Dramatis Personae listed at the beginning of the novel, all neatly organised by category or place for those of us who can easily lose track of such important details. The story itself unfolds over five parts, with much of the first part setting the scene for what is to follow. And by the end of the first part, I was so engrossed in the story I could hardly put it down.
‘History’s naught but gossip well told.’
The main characters include the constables Alister Mackie (the chief constable on the river), Thaddeus Cuff and Dan Sprodd, Griffin Pinney (a game hunter), George Catley (a botanist), Beatrice Faa (a transportee who had been captured by sealers), and Caleb and Moowut’tin (two of the First People).
In 1806, the area around the Hawkesbury River is still frontier territory. Those who live there, pushing away the First People, are soldiers, convicts on assignment, expirees, whores and struggling famers. There are also opportunists, sly groggers and plenty of dangerous creatures.
The scene is set for an epic story, one in which the environment (alien as it is to the Europeans) is also a character. And Martin Sparrow? What does his choice mean for him, what impact does it have?
In a conversation near the end of the novel, Alister Mackie and Thaddeus Cuff have this to say:
‘If it’s Sparrow for company it’s a poor bargain.’
‘Not as poor as you might think. Affection for a fellow creature can fix a man, make him resolute, worthwhile.’
‘Sparrow is a midge, a wretch beyond salvation.’
‘Sparrow was a rudderless heart, that’s all.’
Yes, it is the making of Martin Sparrow.
I really enjoyed this novel, the way in which Mr Cochrane used an historic event (the Hawkesbury River flood of March 1806) as a starting point for this story. I finished the novel wondering what might have happened next.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Martin Sparrow, a convict expiree, is already deep in debt, dithering and drifting through life when the flood on the Hawkesbury River hits his farm in March 1806. Will he rebuild, with all the hard work that will entail? He’s heard of a paradise on the far side of the mountains, a place where men are truly free. To get there, Martin Sparrow needs to pay a toll. Choices always have consequences: who else will be caught up in Sparrow’s choice?
There are more than forty Dramatis Personae listed at the beginning of the novel, all neatly organised by category or place for those of us who can easily lose track of such important details. The story itself unfolds over five parts, with much of the first part setting the scene for what is to follow. And by the end of the first part, I was so engrossed in the story I could hardly put it down.
‘History’s naught but gossip well told.’
The main characters include the constables Alister Mackie (the chief constable on the river), Thaddeus Cuff and Dan Sprodd, Griffin Pinney (a game hunter), George Catley (a botanist), Beatrice Faa (a transportee who had been captured by sealers), and Caleb and Moowut’tin (two of the First People).
In 1806, the area around the Hawkesbury River is still frontier territory. Those who live there, pushing away the First People, are soldiers, convicts on assignment, expirees, whores and struggling famers. There are also opportunists, sly groggers and plenty of dangerous creatures.
The scene is set for an epic story, one in which the environment (alien as it is to the Europeans) is also a character. And Martin Sparrow? What does his choice mean for him, what impact does it have?
In a conversation near the end of the novel, Alister Mackie and Thaddeus Cuff have this to say:
‘If it’s Sparrow for company it’s a poor bargain.’
‘Not as poor as you might think. Affection for a fellow creature can fix a man, make him resolute, worthwhile.’
‘Sparrow is a midge, a wretch beyond salvation.’
‘Sparrow was a rudderless heart, that’s all.’
Yes, it is the making of Martin Sparrow.
I really enjoyed this novel, the way in which Mr Cochrane used an historic event (the Hawkesbury River flood of March 1806) as a starting point for this story. I finished the novel wondering what might have happened next.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
January 1, 2021
I really wanted to love it, but I didn't. I did like it though. Three star like it. Not one of those three stars that really mean 'meh, high side of two'.
It is very well written. The author excelled at capturing the gritty, filthy, violent, bloody, hostile country and it's invaders. It was worth reading for a look through that well thought out and well researched historian's window. I just didn't feel like there was much of a plot and there was nil sub plot. Because of that, the novel included a lot of wheel spinning. I kept wondering where it was going and when was it going to try and get there. Still a good read despite it. Glad to have read it.
It is very well written. The author excelled at capturing the gritty, filthy, violent, bloody, hostile country and it's invaders. It was worth reading for a look through that well thought out and well researched historian's window. I just didn't feel like there was much of a plot and there was nil sub plot. Because of that, the novel included a lot of wheel spinning. I kept wondering where it was going and when was it going to try and get there. Still a good read despite it. Glad to have read it.
Read
May 17, 2018This novel begins with a “Dramatis Personae” list which in itself hints at what we’re in for - a performance, an entertainment, something conjured...and, as it turns out, history intensified and writ large.
Martin Sparrow is a convict expiree, Beatrice Faa a gypsy transportee captured by sealers, Griffin Pinney a roaming game hunter, Thaddeus Cuff a constable, Harper Sneezby a sly grogger, Thyne Kunkle an Army Captain, Reuben Peskett a vicious sergeant...and so on. Throw in a wide selection of types who might have inhabited the Hawkesbury frontier in the very early 1800s; whores, expirees, assigned convicts, brutal soldiers, struggling farmers, add dangerous animals, raging floods, threatening aboriginal warriors, as well as mayhem and murder, and you have this sprawling larger-than-life yarn set in the Hawkesbury frontier in the very early 1800s.
For all its breathless drama, though, this is interesting history. The Hawkesbury River, bread-bowl of the new colony, is given a life; the complex and tense relations between Europeans and the Aboriginal tribespeople, the lot of convict women, the difficulty of European attempts to break through the mountain barriers which held them to the coast, the stumbling attempts to accomodate to this strange land. And all of this desperate grasping and angst driven by an intense hope for a better future.
Historian turned novelist Peter Cochrane has bedded history in a skilled ripping yarn, and added an interesting variation to our still evolving frontier literature.
Martin Sparrow is a convict expiree, Beatrice Faa a gypsy transportee captured by sealers, Griffin Pinney a roaming game hunter, Thaddeus Cuff a constable, Harper Sneezby a sly grogger, Thyne Kunkle an Army Captain, Reuben Peskett a vicious sergeant...and so on. Throw in a wide selection of types who might have inhabited the Hawkesbury frontier in the very early 1800s; whores, expirees, assigned convicts, brutal soldiers, struggling farmers, add dangerous animals, raging floods, threatening aboriginal warriors, as well as mayhem and murder, and you have this sprawling larger-than-life yarn set in the Hawkesbury frontier in the very early 1800s.
For all its breathless drama, though, this is interesting history. The Hawkesbury River, bread-bowl of the new colony, is given a life; the complex and tense relations between Europeans and the Aboriginal tribespeople, the lot of convict women, the difficulty of European attempts to break through the mountain barriers which held them to the coast, the stumbling attempts to accomodate to this strange land. And all of this desperate grasping and angst driven by an intense hope for a better future.
Historian turned novelist Peter Cochrane has bedded history in a skilled ripping yarn, and added an interesting variation to our still evolving frontier literature.
February 7, 2020
Riveting story of early European settler life in the Hawkesbury River region of the New South Wales colony. Set in 1806, a good 20 years before any official Europeans expeditions made it across the dividing ranges. Cochrane has brought this time and place vibrantly to life in a darkly comic and entirely plausible tale of woe and adventure. With the scales tipping firmly on the side of "woe".
Essentially a "Bolter Caper", the story emerges as a cat-and-mouse chase between the hapless protagonist Martin Sparrow and the governor's constables pursuing him for reasons that become increasingly tenuous.
Cochrane the historian can be relied upon to research his place and period thoroughly, and to reproduce this in a trustworthy manner. But the unexpected delight I found comes from just how accomplished a storyteller he turns out to be along the way. I can't think of any way this novel could have been improved upon, so I gave it 5 stars.
Essentially a "Bolter Caper", the story emerges as a cat-and-mouse chase between the hapless protagonist Martin Sparrow and the governor's constables pursuing him for reasons that become increasingly tenuous.
Cochrane the historian can be relied upon to research his place and period thoroughly, and to reproduce this in a trustworthy manner. But the unexpected delight I found comes from just how accomplished a storyteller he turns out to be along the way. I can't think of any way this novel could have been improved upon, so I gave it 5 stars.
August 1, 2018
This novel, The Making of Martin Sparrow, is not just a skimming of the historical lifestyle that existed during the initial convict settlement of the Hawkesbury River. It is an intricate examination of the numerous horrors and precious few joys of everyday life of the residents in the food bowl teetering on unpredictable muddy banks and flood prone river flats.
The author Peter Cochrane illuminates his extensive knowledge of that era by superb warts and all character building. His colourful characters hailing largely from the old countries of Scotland, Ireland and the UK are cruelly moulded to survive in this unforgiving hand to mouth culture. The police chief Mackie and his small support staff are men struggling to deal justly but harshly with ex-convicts, farmers, publicans, prostitutes, and indigenous dispossessed tribesmen.
This volatile mix of desperate people coupled with the author’s expertise makes for a wonderful compelling saga of survival and personal growth against all odds. Men like Martin Sparrow, usually uneducated frightened non-entities, either flounder in the unforgiving morass or find strength in themselves that surprises everyone.
What a prize it is to find dignity, humility, honesty and love able to survive in this fetid, leech and mosquito ridden outreach.
This is a book well worth the considerable time investment required to read and comprehend it. This book skilfully tells the tales of the foundation of this nation Australia and leaves us wondering how so many early settlers survived to plant the seeds for any type of worthwhile future. It is a tribute to our forbears, scaling away any preconceived romantic notions of our past, laying bare the bones of near extinction and imminent exhaustion to reveal the true grit required by early Australians.
I loved the book and would recommend it and most of its gory details to any earnest reader.
Carinya
The author Peter Cochrane illuminates his extensive knowledge of that era by superb warts and all character building. His colourful characters hailing largely from the old countries of Scotland, Ireland and the UK are cruelly moulded to survive in this unforgiving hand to mouth culture. The police chief Mackie and his small support staff are men struggling to deal justly but harshly with ex-convicts, farmers, publicans, prostitutes, and indigenous dispossessed tribesmen.
This volatile mix of desperate people coupled with the author’s expertise makes for a wonderful compelling saga of survival and personal growth against all odds. Men like Martin Sparrow, usually uneducated frightened non-entities, either flounder in the unforgiving morass or find strength in themselves that surprises everyone.
What a prize it is to find dignity, humility, honesty and love able to survive in this fetid, leech and mosquito ridden outreach.
This is a book well worth the considerable time investment required to read and comprehend it. This book skilfully tells the tales of the foundation of this nation Australia and leaves us wondering how so many early settlers survived to plant the seeds for any type of worthwhile future. It is a tribute to our forbears, scaling away any preconceived romantic notions of our past, laying bare the bones of near extinction and imminent exhaustion to reveal the true grit required by early Australians.
I loved the book and would recommend it and most of its gory details to any earnest reader.
Carinya
December 15, 2018
At first I struggled with this book, finding the writing somewhat over complicated. After reading 60 odd pages I put it down and read other books instead. However, the premise had intrigued me and there was something there that had grabbed me.
I’m very grateful that I did pick it back up and continue as by the end I was rooting for Martin Sparrow and was quite engrossed in his journey!
Being interested in settlement history and in particular first contact this book, I feel, presents a fair and unbiased view on the atrocities and harshness of those times. The various personalities and opinions of the settlers was interesting whilst the few interactions with the Indigenous characters was refreshing.
Finally, the depth of feeling in the country presented was fantastic and this part really spoke to me throughout.
Overall, the story is definitely worth a read with a few memorable lines and characters.
I’m very grateful that I did pick it back up and continue as by the end I was rooting for Martin Sparrow and was quite engrossed in his journey!
Being interested in settlement history and in particular first contact this book, I feel, presents a fair and unbiased view on the atrocities and harshness of those times. The various personalities and opinions of the settlers was interesting whilst the few interactions with the Indigenous characters was refreshing.
Finally, the depth of feeling in the country presented was fantastic and this part really spoke to me throughout.
Overall, the story is definitely worth a read with a few memorable lines and characters.
October 19, 2018
Cochrane is a fine narrative writer, and this comes through both his histories and also his fiction, of which The Making of Martin Sparrow is his second foray. I was much impressed with an essay he wrote for the Griffith Review on the writing of narrative history and I enjoyed seeing him deploying his craft in the fictional The Making of Martin Sparrow.
...Set on the Hawkesbury River, this book instantly invites comparisons with Kate Grenville's The Secret River. But this is no domestic drama: for those who've read The Secret River, this book is set more in the brutish world of Smasher Sullivan than in William Thornhill's morally-conflicted travails. Life 'back home' in England is only obliquely mentioned, and action is set firmly within the penal colony with its own corruptions and violence, where everyone is scrabbling to find a toe-hold in a 'new' country that is very old, with the mindset and practices of 'home'.
...Actually, it would make a damned good film, with an ending left ambiguous enough to be enticing. It is a nuanced portrayal of a penal settlement and human nature.
For my complete review see: https://residentjudge.com/2018/10/19/...
...Set on the Hawkesbury River, this book instantly invites comparisons with Kate Grenville's The Secret River. But this is no domestic drama: for those who've read The Secret River, this book is set more in the brutish world of Smasher Sullivan than in William Thornhill's morally-conflicted travails. Life 'back home' in England is only obliquely mentioned, and action is set firmly within the penal colony with its own corruptions and violence, where everyone is scrabbling to find a toe-hold in a 'new' country that is very old, with the mindset and practices of 'home'.
...Actually, it would make a damned good film, with an ending left ambiguous enough to be enticing. It is a nuanced portrayal of a penal settlement and human nature.
For my complete review see: https://residentjudge.com/2018/10/19/...
July 13, 2018
Australia in 1806 is a harsh place, especially for those living on the Hawkesbury after the great flood. In the small village of Prominence, the flood has brought hardship to many, especially ex-convict Martin Sparrow, who has lost his crop, his chooks, and his house. He would like to escape to the fabled lands of the west, where there is freedom, whales and a river leading to the sea and new lands.
His flight is curtailed by other events - the arrival and sale of Bea Faa, a woman stolen by sealers, the on-going conflict with the local native population, the NSW Corps who are cruel and crude. This is a world of cruelty and violence, but also of possibilities.
I loved this book for its sense of place and for the evocation of history. So good.
His flight is curtailed by other events - the arrival and sale of Bea Faa, a woman stolen by sealers, the on-going conflict with the local native population, the NSW Corps who are cruel and crude. This is a world of cruelty and violence, but also of possibilities.
I loved this book for its sense of place and for the evocation of history. So good.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 22, 2018
My favourite read of the year so far, set on the Hawkesbury in 1806 and with fully believable attitudes and actions for the frontier combination of free settlers, convicts, expirees, first peoples and the dissolute soldiery. Martin Sparrow himself is a rather pathetic ex-convict, disfigured by jaundice and facial scars, too apologetic and put-upon in a harsh society, and with his small, back-breaking holding just destroyed by the floods. Sparrow is attracted by the supposed utopia beyond the mountains and his quest (with his dog, Amicus) leads to bloodshed and change.
The constables, Mackie, Cuff and Sprodd, are the most sympathetic of a range of variously damaged individuals, but all characters are superbly delineated and time and place evocatively rendered.
December 9, 2018
An interesting commentary on the very beginnings of the country we call Australia.
Some flowery, high-brow language slows the beginning of the book, it has very evocative, and lengthy descriptive passages to plough through. However, it all adds to the story and in some ways mirrors the life of the book’s protagonist.
Once you have waded through this heavy going, suddenly you’re flying along, waiting for the next twist in the tale.
Certainly worth the heavy going at the beginning , an interesting perspective of where we have come from.
Some flowery, high-brow language slows the beginning of the book, it has very evocative, and lengthy descriptive passages to plough through. However, it all adds to the story and in some ways mirrors the life of the book’s protagonist.
Once you have waded through this heavy going, suddenly you’re flying along, waiting for the next twist in the tale.
Certainly worth the heavy going at the beginning , an interesting perspective of where we have come from.
April 1, 2024
Absolutely phenomenal!!! I was in Sydney and spending some time on the Hawkesbury and wanted to find a historical fiction about the area - I found this in a bookshop and it hit the nail on the head !!
I learnt so much in a historical sense and the plot line is so exciting and intelligent. I really appreciated the diversity of characters too, it gives a really good mix of perspectives to really understand the period. Also there is an explainer about the context and the historical events that inspired the book at the end.
I learnt so much in a historical sense and the plot line is so exciting and intelligent. I really appreciated the diversity of characters too, it gives a really good mix of perspectives to really understand the period. Also there is an explainer about the context and the historical events that inspired the book at the end.
December 28, 2024
A fabulous historical read and an entertaining adventure for Peter Cochrane’s first novel.
It took a while to comprehend the conversational narrative of the early settlers but once conquered it is a formidable read full of adventure, unexpected turns and grisly deaths entwined with well researched expressive details of the majestic surrounds of Wollemi National Park and the Garden of Stones as named today.
A thoroughly entertaining read, would highly recommend if you like Australian convict, early settler type stories.
It took a while to comprehend the conversational narrative of the early settlers but once conquered it is a formidable read full of adventure, unexpected turns and grisly deaths entwined with well researched expressive details of the majestic surrounds of Wollemi National Park and the Garden of Stones as named today.
A thoroughly entertaining read, would highly recommend if you like Australian convict, early settler type stories.
September 11, 2018
The writing in this book is sheer brilliance - I felt like I was there in the early settlement. It is raw, gritty, dirty and animalistic. I took one star off because I found the graphic descriptions just a bit too realistic and not to my taste. Its a story about Martin Sparrow and his trials and tribulations in the Hawkesbury River area in Australias early settlement.
August 23, 2018
Cheryl Bookclub 2018
September 23, 2020
This is a violent depiction of life on the Hawkesbury in 1806
Read
April 19, 2021DNF ~ pp. 138
October 10, 2022
A new way of looking at the settlement of Australia from a fictional viewpoint. I loved watching Martin Sparrow develop into a man.
July 22, 2021
A cast of larger than life characters, their dialogue wryly humorous, but sometimes filled with touching pathos.
February 28, 2025
The rear cover describes the book as a character driven story, ie Marty Sparrow down on his luck having lost everything, but for me the terrific level of detail of life in the early 1800's along the Hawkesbury, the hardship, hunger and natural disasters became larger then the story of one little man.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews