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The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow: Text Classics
There are distant shouts, rifle shots, the pounding of feet across the bridge, the sound of running. A woman’s scream carves the night then bubbles away.
In 1930 the superintendent of a mission on a Queensland island, driven mad by his wife’s death, goes on a murderous rampage. Fearing for their lives, the other whites arm a young Indigenous man and order him to shoot Uncle Boss dead. The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow traces the lead-up to this bloody showdown and the repercussions in the years after—for Aboriginal people and the colonial overseers.
Thea Astley was born in Brisbane in 1925. Her first novel, Girl with a Monkey, was published in 1958 and her third, The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Many notable books followed, among them the groundbreaking A Kindness Cup (1974), which addressed frontier massacres of Indigenous Australians, and It’s Raining in Mango (1987). Her last novel was Drylands (1999), her fourth Miles Franklin winner. Her fiction is distinguished by vivid imagery and metaphor; a complex, ironic style; and a desire to highlight oppression and social injustice. One of the most distinctive and influential Australian novelists of the twentieth century, Astley died in 2004.
A lifelong chain-smoker famed for her sharp wit, Thea Astley died in 2004, the year after her husband died. She remains one of the most distinctive and influential Australian novelists of the twentieth century.
‘Passion, brilliance and originality.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Formidable…Uniquely provocative, acerbic and glittering.’ Australian
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Thea Astley
35 books46 followersThea Astley was one of Australia's most respected and acclaimed novelists. Born in Brisbane in 1925, Astley studied arts at the University of Queensland. She held a position as Fellow in Australian Literature at Macquarie University until 1980, when she retired to write full time. In 1989 she was granted an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Queensland.
She won the Miles Franklin Award four times - in 1962 for The Well Dressed Explorer, in 1965 for The Slow Natives, in 1972 for The Acolyte and in 2000 for Drylands. In 1989 she was award the Patrick White Award. Other awards include 1975 The Age Book of the Year Award for A Kindness Cup, the 1980 James Cook Foundation of Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple, the 1986 ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters, the 1988 Steele Rudd Award for It's Raining in Mango, the 1990 NSW Premier's Prize for Reaching Tin River, and the 1996 Age Book of the Year Award and the FAW Australian Unity Award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow.
Praise for Thea Astley:
'Beyond all the satire, the wit, the occasional cruelty, and the constant compassion, the unfailing attribute of Astley's work is panache' Australian Book Review
She won the Miles Franklin Award four times - in 1962 for The Well Dressed Explorer, in 1965 for The Slow Natives, in 1972 for The Acolyte and in 2000 for Drylands. In 1989 she was award the Patrick White Award. Other awards include 1975 The Age Book of the Year Award for A Kindness Cup, the 1980 James Cook Foundation of Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple, the 1986 ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters, the 1988 Steele Rudd Award for It's Raining in Mango, the 1990 NSW Premier's Prize for Reaching Tin River, and the 1996 Age Book of the Year Award and the FAW Australian Unity Award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow.
Praise for Thea Astley:
'Beyond all the satire, the wit, the occasional cruelty, and the constant compassion, the unfailing attribute of Astley's work is panache' Australian Book Review
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 19, 2021
The historical event upon which Astley’s novel rests, a superintendent of Palm Island Aboriginal settlement running amok, was apparently a matter of that individual’s circumstances. But Astley is constantly directing her reader’s attention to the disgrace of an administrative system that did much to create such madness. What is ultimately sickening about this novel is that eight years after it was published an Aboriginal man died in police custody on Palm Island, and it took years of public pressure before there was any admission of police liability. But, then, Astley was merely reporting an unjust, racist system, which would inevitably manifest the inherent violence by which it governed.
This is a neatly constructed novel. Each chapter is in the voice of a distinct and separate character, and each glances off the pivotal episode of the superintendent's crack-up.
Astley’s evocation of a tropic wet season, of the heat and rain, is perhaps only fully appreciated by those of us old enough to have lived through such times in the days before air-con.
This is a neatly constructed novel. Each chapter is in the voice of a distinct and separate character, and each glances off the pivotal episode of the superintendent's crack-up.
Astley’s evocation of a tropic wet season, of the heat and rain, is perhaps only fully appreciated by those of us old enough to have lived through such times in the days before air-con.
February 13, 2013
My first Thea Astley. Outstanding. I couldn't put it down. Harrowing, insightful, multiple points of view so technically accomplished, historically based and relevant today, if you recall Palm Island. What an appalling piece of Australian (current) history. Descriptions in boarding school in Queensland's outback and life in Brisbane in that era brilliantly depicted. Can't wait to read the next one.
May 8, 2025
A sad, tragic, historical fiction novel set on Palm Island, Queensland, between 1918 and 1957. Palm Island in 1930 was a dumping ground for ‘problem’ indigenous Australians. The white superintendent, Captain Brodie, mad with grief at the death of his baby, then his wife, goes crazy, setting fire to buildings (including his own home in which his children were sleeping). He is shot dead by Manny, an indigenous man, who was under the order of the white deputy superintendent. The story then, through a number of characters over the following thirty years, describes the impact of this event on the white people on the island at the time of the killing. Mrs. Curthoys is a landlady. Gerald Morrow, a writer, who found work on the island as a foreman. Mr Vine, a school teacher. Father Donelian, a priest who visits the island regularly. Leonie, the daughter of Mrs Curthoys. Both Mrs Curthoys and Leonie find they do not like being married. The indigenous Australians are treated with cruelty and disrespect by the white residents of the island.
An interesting account of the attitudes of white men to indigenous Australians and females.
This book was shortlisted for the 1997 Miles Franklin Award.
An interesting account of the attitudes of white men to indigenous Australians and females.
This book was shortlisted for the 1997 Miles Franklin Award.
January 8, 2012
I read this book initially as I signed up for the < a href=" http://www.australianwomenwriters.com... Australian Women Writers Book Challenge (you should too!) – it was close at hand and not too long and I’ve had it for some time and while I have loved the cover, I've never looked inside. It was a great choice as the novel is very engaging and thought provoking - really one of those books that gets under your skin, and makes you think about it for days afterwards. The rhythm of the text is just lovely – the language rich and rolling without extraneous verbiage or filler.
Based on a real event and a real setting, the novel takes place on Doebin (Palm Island in real life) - an island off the coast of Queensland used as a Government ‘reserve’ (ie dumping ground) for Indigenous Australians from the mainland. Essentially used as un-improvable slave labour by a small group of white administrators; the inhuman treatment of these people remains a strong running theme throughout the book and the other major characters are tried and tested by their reactions to the casual and institutionalized racism described. It’s not an easy book then to read – it made me very sad in parts.... that terrible itchy sad/angry that you get reading about injustices that you know are true and real even when presented in a fictional form.
The narrative structure is also interesting; the climax of the piece comes early on and the rest of the book retells this shocking episode through the eyes of the characters who were on the island at the time; the effects of rippling down through the years and the generations. Even in what is a relatively short book (296 pages) the characters shine strong and well-rounded – I totally know that Mrs Curthoys and I would be best friends forever!
A really worth while read
Based on a real event and a real setting, the novel takes place on Doebin (Palm Island in real life) - an island off the coast of Queensland used as a Government ‘reserve’ (ie dumping ground) for Indigenous Australians from the mainland. Essentially used as un-improvable slave labour by a small group of white administrators; the inhuman treatment of these people remains a strong running theme throughout the book and the other major characters are tried and tested by their reactions to the casual and institutionalized racism described. It’s not an easy book then to read – it made me very sad in parts.... that terrible itchy sad/angry that you get reading about injustices that you know are true and real even when presented in a fictional form.
The narrative structure is also interesting; the climax of the piece comes early on and the rest of the book retells this shocking episode through the eyes of the characters who were on the island at the time; the effects of rippling down through the years and the generations. Even in what is a relatively short book (296 pages) the characters shine strong and well-rounded – I totally know that Mrs Curthoys and I would be best friends forever!
A really worth while read
March 11, 2014
This is perfect Astley with her keen eye, her attention to Australian language and characters that are real and idiosyncratic.
The heat and humidity never leaves the pages nor the characters, causing them to do things that a sane person would avoid. The main event is based on an actual tragedy on Palm Island north of Townsville in February 1930. Astley spins a beautiful story of the fall out of this event; it is brutal and honest and believable. And that is why I love Astley - she can create honest, clever fiction from historical events that seems so seamless.
Queensland has episodes of history that are horrible, that shouldn't be forgotten, but has been so easily airbrushed by the state government. Astley always was there to remind us of the facts and the people: to enjoy her fiction, but to be mindful that incidents shouldn't be repeated.
The heat and humidity never leaves the pages nor the characters, causing them to do things that a sane person would avoid. The main event is based on an actual tragedy on Palm Island north of Townsville in February 1930. Astley spins a beautiful story of the fall out of this event; it is brutal and honest and believable. And that is why I love Astley - she can create honest, clever fiction from historical events that seems so seamless.
Queensland has episodes of history that are horrible, that shouldn't be forgotten, but has been so easily airbrushed by the state government. Astley always was there to remind us of the facts and the people: to enjoy her fiction, but to be mindful that incidents shouldn't be repeated.
August 28, 2020
I’d love to know who designed the cover of the 1996 Viking hardback first edition of The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow. That image of shadowy Indigenous figures in the landscape is a perfect allusion to the content of Thea Astley’s penultimate novel whereas the Penguin paperback which followed in 1997 gives the wrong impression altogether. A rainshadow is a dry area on the leeward side of mountains which block the passage of rain. Farming in Australian areas of rainshadow is a heartbreaking business when only neighbours on the other side of the mountain receive drought-breaking rains. Areas in rainshadow are desiccated deserts, withered, dried out, incapable of nourishing life and growth.
Like the characters in this novel.
The story fictionalises a real event on Palm Island:
Thea Astley at her crusading best, brings this event to life through multiple perspectives over a chronology of ensuing decades. The book begins with Manny Cooktown, the only Indigenous narrator, whose bitter first person voice is interleaved among the others. Manny is the one who puts an end to the madness after being armed by administrators skulking in safety. As always there is a search for a scapegoat, and Manny is put on trial on the mainland, away from his wife and children.
There are two women whose narrative is also first person — intimate, confiding and scornful: very Astley. Mrs Curthoys is a widow who makes a living as a landlady on the island, hosting the various administrators of what is essentially a penal colony for innocent Indigenous men, women and children. She has two daughters, for whom she has social ambitions: Leonie narrates part of the story in years long after the incident. The other voices are all examples of the ineffectual, morally complicit Whites, and they are distanced from the reader by third person narration: Gerald Morrow, the failed author and incompetent foreman who is depicted on the 1997 Penguin cover in his craven escape from the island during the violence; Mr Vine, yet another of Astley’s misfit schoolteachers isolated by his intellect, and defeated by his attempts to teach a classical education to the boorish sons of the wannabe gentry. Like others in the Astley pantheon, he marries imprudently out of loneliness. (Marriage is, in this novel, an institution which meets no one’s needs.) Father Donellan is a well-meaning but useless priest, defeated in his attempts to ameliorate conditions for the Indigenous people herded onto the island and treated abominably by the supervisors who succeeded Captain Brodie, who, for all his manifold flaws, at least was fond of the poor devils even as he treated them like children with very little potential.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/08/26/t...
Like the characters in this novel.
The story fictionalises a real event on Palm Island:
In the little hours of a January morning in 1930, on an island off the Queensland coast, a man goes berserk with a rifle and a box of gelignite. Is he evil? Or crazy? His violence is in fact a mirror for the brutality of Australian life – and is a dim reflection at that, in a country where atrocities by whites against blacks are so ingrained few question them.
The effects of the rampage ripple out from the island to link the fates of those who witnessed it, across the north and down through the decades. It is a time when silence in the face of tyranny is at its loudest. When allegiance to English niceties is confounded by the landscape and by the weather. And change is a slow wind that brings little real difference.
Thea Astley at her crusading best, brings this event to life through multiple perspectives over a chronology of ensuing decades. The book begins with Manny Cooktown, the only Indigenous narrator, whose bitter first person voice is interleaved among the others. Manny is the one who puts an end to the madness after being armed by administrators skulking in safety. As always there is a search for a scapegoat, and Manny is put on trial on the mainland, away from his wife and children.
There are two women whose narrative is also first person — intimate, confiding and scornful: very Astley. Mrs Curthoys is a widow who makes a living as a landlady on the island, hosting the various administrators of what is essentially a penal colony for innocent Indigenous men, women and children. She has two daughters, for whom she has social ambitions: Leonie narrates part of the story in years long after the incident. The other voices are all examples of the ineffectual, morally complicit Whites, and they are distanced from the reader by third person narration: Gerald Morrow, the failed author and incompetent foreman who is depicted on the 1997 Penguin cover in his craven escape from the island during the violence; Mr Vine, yet another of Astley’s misfit schoolteachers isolated by his intellect, and defeated by his attempts to teach a classical education to the boorish sons of the wannabe gentry. Like others in the Astley pantheon, he marries imprudently out of loneliness. (Marriage is, in this novel, an institution which meets no one’s needs.) Father Donellan is a well-meaning but useless priest, defeated in his attempts to ameliorate conditions for the Indigenous people herded onto the island and treated abominably by the supervisors who succeeded Captain Brodie, who, for all his manifold flaws, at least was fond of the poor devils even as he treated them like children with very little potential.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/08/26/t...
June 3, 2023
As I read the last lines of this novel, I felt a range of emotions that I am struggling to articulate. Astley is a master of the written word and in this novel, she expertly weaves you through several character viewpoints and through a series of time shifts.
The story is based on the events that happened on Palm Island in the 1930s but we are taken to Doebin where Superintendent Brodie is losing control and eventually goes on a murderous rampage and it is an Indigenous man, Manny Cooktown who stops Brodie.
Astley tells the story primarily through the view of the white people who go or have been to the island. She weaves a story that brings out the injustice and the cruelty of what occurred. You need the different characters viewpoints to understand the complete picture and at the end, well bereft is the best word I can find.
The story is based on the events that happened on Palm Island in the 1930s but we are taken to Doebin where Superintendent Brodie is losing control and eventually goes on a murderous rampage and it is an Indigenous man, Manny Cooktown who stops Brodie.
Astley tells the story primarily through the view of the white people who go or have been to the island. She weaves a story that brings out the injustice and the cruelty of what occurred. You need the different characters viewpoints to understand the complete picture and at the end, well bereft is the best word I can find.
June 2, 2020
When I began I had no idea that this book was based on actual events, yet I kept thinking that it sounded a bit like Palm Island. In fact that's exactly where it is set. The murderous rampage at the beginning and the strike at the end are both factual events, but she has fictionalized the characters. The book traverses the lives of the players and witnesses to the the first event and follows them in later years as they struggle in various ways in that steamy, tropical but socially oh so English environment. It is pitiful to realise that things haven't changed much, considering the death in a police cell of Cameron 'Mulrunji' Doomadgee in the early 2000s. Shameful then and now.
December 14, 2017
Thea Astley writes about an event that happened in the 1930s but this historical fiction has turned out to be tragically prescient.
The bookends that frame the book- the rampage and the strike- are both factual events, but she has fictionalized the characters. Even Brodie/Curry (a factual character) has been filled out from the imagination, as he did not survive to give any account of his motivation.
It begins with the cyclone that annihilated the Aboriginal settlement Mission Beach and led to the establishment of a new mission on Palm Island and it ends with the 1957 strike of the Palm Island men against the menial tasks they were expected to do- an industrial action that was severely repressed. And though Thea Astley didn’t know it, we could add another post script to her story with the Palm Island death of Mulrunji Doomadgee that Chloe Hooper has described so sensitively in her book The Tall Man.
The central action in the book is the massacre inflicted by the superintendent of the island, Robert Curry (known in the book as “Uncle Boss Brodie”) who, crazed by the death of his wife and suffering from neuralgia, torched his own house killing his children, shot and wounded the Doctor and his wife (mistress in the book), set fire to the other houses and blew up the buildings on the reserve. He was eventually shot by one of the Palm Islanders on the orders of one of the white officials.
The book is told from the perspective of different characters, but it spans a long period of time. The characters are all interconnected over the years, even though they go in different directions in the wake of the tragedy.
The book ends in despair and hopelessness. There’s no redemption here for anyone.
For my complete review see:
https://residentjudge.wordpress.com/2...
The bookends that frame the book- the rampage and the strike- are both factual events, but she has fictionalized the characters. Even Brodie/Curry (a factual character) has been filled out from the imagination, as he did not survive to give any account of his motivation.
It begins with the cyclone that annihilated the Aboriginal settlement Mission Beach and led to the establishment of a new mission on Palm Island and it ends with the 1957 strike of the Palm Island men against the menial tasks they were expected to do- an industrial action that was severely repressed. And though Thea Astley didn’t know it, we could add another post script to her story with the Palm Island death of Mulrunji Doomadgee that Chloe Hooper has described so sensitively in her book The Tall Man.
The central action in the book is the massacre inflicted by the superintendent of the island, Robert Curry (known in the book as “Uncle Boss Brodie”) who, crazed by the death of his wife and suffering from neuralgia, torched his own house killing his children, shot and wounded the Doctor and his wife (mistress in the book), set fire to the other houses and blew up the buildings on the reserve. He was eventually shot by one of the Palm Islanders on the orders of one of the white officials.
The book is told from the perspective of different characters, but it spans a long period of time. The characters are all interconnected over the years, even though they go in different directions in the wake of the tragedy.
The book ends in despair and hopelessness. There’s no redemption here for anyone.
For my complete review see:
https://residentjudge.wordpress.com/2...
September 15, 2025
An easy 4.5. Astley captures the horror and oppression of midcentury Australian society with an unequaled skill, and in particular small-town small-mindedness. While of course not just an Australian situation it is focused there with its local variables - it could likely be largely applied to many British and ex-British working/middle class societies worldwide. The racism and misogyny that were its foundations are laid bare in a fictional tale based on the real world Palm Island tragedy of the 1930’s. It is a powerful and heavy tale with few glimmers of light, and the oppressed along with their oppressors suffer needlessly due to the strictures of the prevailing white Australian ‘culture’. There is not much joy to be had all round. The characters that fare best are those that fight against the prevailing norms and Astley at least gives us some feisty characters to root for, even if they are screwed. If you have not read Astley I’d highly recommend.
October 9, 2022
Beautifully written with an amazing vocabulary, depecting the hopelessness faced by the aborigines incarcerated on Palm Island.
Wonderful characters and story telling, although at points I may have become confused with the timeline.
Written in 1996, Thea Astley was acutely aware of the history regarding the treatment of aboriginals.....why was I so oblivious....I wonder with shame.
Wonderful characters and story telling, although at points I may have become confused with the timeline.
Written in 1996, Thea Astley was acutely aware of the history regarding the treatment of aboriginals.....why was I so oblivious....I wonder with shame.
January 12, 2023
Astley is one of my favourite writers. Her gentle humour and her biting social commentary make for a reliably engaging read. In this book she reminds us how deep the roots of racism are in Australia. Following this book - and by coincidence - I read "Telling Tennant's Story" and the two books together make an effective diptych on Australian culture and the stories that shape us.
April 10, 2020
A historical fiction well worth a read for anyone interested in the history of Australia. Great emotional depth and believable characters.
A good look at the disparity of story telling throughout history; history as a subjective exploration of experience rather than necessarily factual truth.
A good look at the disparity of story telling throughout history; history as a subjective exploration of experience rather than necessarily factual truth.
April 20, 2025
Being Thea Astley, the writing is wonderful. If you are looking for a plot driven read, then this is not for you. Thought provoking, at times humorous, interesting characters, I enjoyed this book.
October 4, 2023
I've not read the author, till this book, and on reading this, I'm wondering why! You don't win three Miles Franklin's simply because you get published! You have to be able to write, and Astley can certainly do that, and some!
The book is apparently based upon fact, but the author raises the bar and makes the reader think about what happened by presenting different viewpoints, from those there. It makes you assess what brought this on. For me, it's a damning indictment on the systems that prevailed, and those legacies still sadly prevail.
So beautifully written, and surprisingly witty, at times. This is a special Australian novel that is all too sadly neglected. I was one of them, (who left this on the shelf for too long) but this won't be my last Astley,as the author is clearly one of our best!
The book is apparently based upon fact, but the author raises the bar and makes the reader think about what happened by presenting different viewpoints, from those there. It makes you assess what brought this on. For me, it's a damning indictment on the systems that prevailed, and those legacies still sadly prevail.
So beautifully written, and surprisingly witty, at times. This is a special Australian novel that is all too sadly neglected. I was one of them, (who left this on the shelf for too long) but this won't be my last Astley,as the author is clearly one of our best!
June 9, 2013
An odd book that spans 20 or so years, starting with a crazed killing spree on an island for isolating indigenous blacks, then follows the principals on the island and their children interacting afterwards. The first half is full of precise observations and metaphors as the original characters struggle with their lives and roles on the island, but yields not as successfully to more straighforward and polemical writing in the end affirming resistance to the subjugation of women and blacks. The main theme otherwise is how we become trapped in conventions and repeated patterns of living, as well as how we often respond, raging impotently or struggling to escape.
July 9, 2014
This was difficult to get into since none of the characters were particularly appealing. However, I persevered mainly because I had little else to read on a long car trip. I found it a finely woven, multi-faceted tale that was very satisfying
February 28, 2012
A little difficult to get into at the beginning. Weaves quite an intricate web of peoples lives by the end.
June 6, 2014
Struggled with this, in the end decided there are too many other books out there awaiting my attention. Interesting story line but the style made it difficult for me to follow.
October 23, 2016
Strangely prophetic of The Tall Man by Claire Hooper. Tragic, a bit fragmented as some stories interweave without consequence but still with something to say about Australia's double standards.
May 19, 2024
Thea Astley's novel
....one of her top 5 books!
....one of her top 5 books!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews