The Winter Road

by Kate Holden

An epic true story of greed, power and a desire for legacy from an acclaimed Australian storyteller.

July 2014, a lonely road at twilight outside Croppa Creek, New South 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull takes out a .22 and shoots environmental officer Glen Turner in the back.

On one side, a farmer hoping to secure his family’s wealth on the richest agricultural soil in the country. On the other, his the government man trying to apply environmental laws.

The brutal killing of Glen Turner splits open the story of our place on this land. Is our time on this soil a tale of tragedy or triumph – are we reaping what we’ve sown? Do we owe protection to the land, or does it owe us a living? And what happens when, in pursuit of an inheritance for his family, a man creates terrible consequences?

Kate Holden brings her discerning eye to a gripping tale of law, land and entitlement. It is the story of Australia.

Genres: Nonfiction, Australia, True Crime, Audiobook, Nature, History, Crime

479 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Kate Holden was born in Melbourne in 1972. She completed an Honours degree in classics and literature at the University of Melbourne and a graduate diploma in professional writing and editing. 'In My Skin: A Memoir' is her first book.

Reviews

[Lonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the book covers the murder of a man doing his job—making sure no illegal clearing of native flora was being done—that really isn’t the main focus.
The focus is on land “ownership” the exploitation of said land by the colonisers of Australia by farmers, miners and the like.
It is about the loss of habitat for native animals, the extinction facing some of them and the desecration of the land for profit.
Very well written and informative book that does not glorify the murder but deals with it sensitively.
It will probably make you very angry. Angry at the greed and lack of respect for the beautiful country that has been destroyed for profit and greed.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended. From my review in The Saturday Paper (29 May - 4 June): 'In The Winter Road, Holden, who writes regularly for The Saturday Paper, relates with empathy and intelligence a dramatic and complex story, which has deep links to the past and profound implications for the future. This is a tale of brigalow and big personalities, fence lines and bottom lines, carbon and kangaroos, to which the author applies both microscope and telescope. With one hand, she guides us expertly through the thick tangle of contentious legislation, inconsistent enforcement, confusing administrative restructures, and long-running legal cases – the bureaucratic scrub that is an inescapable part of this narrative landscape. With the other, she applies the filters of philosophy, history and aesthetics to tease out larger lessons. The genius of the book, which, as a model of reconstructive journalism places Holden alongside Chloe Hooper and Anna Krien, lies in Holden’s ability to apply her intense intellectuality to a topic that, in the most literal of senses, is so down to earth.'

[Jim Rimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bleak irony of finishing this book just days after Barnaby Joyce was returned as leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia wasn't lost on me. Old mate embodies many of the dire philosophies that cause so much anguish between these pages and across these lands.

The Winter Road is about much more than a killing at Croppa Creek, though this incident is explored thoroughly and is used as the crucible through which so many other elements are woven together. Holden's book is really the story of the desecration of Australia since colonisation, a slow and silent violence that has over time become faster, louder, and ever more intense. The desertification of once bountiful and harmonious environments.

This is non-fiction at its most urgent. Like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation it is a desperate call to action.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow what an amazing read! This is an incredibly rich analysis of white Australia's relationship to land, inspired by the 2014 murder of an environmental protection officer investigating illegal land clearing. An insightful reflection on how our history, culture and values led to a tragedy of epic proportions on a lonely country road. Highly, highly recommended!

[Rueben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult story requires safe hands, and Kate has shown she has some of the safest hands around. Riveting, harrowing, infuriating -- what a great read.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous non-fiction read. Holden's research into the murder is exceptional, and she uses it as an entry point into the changing social acceptance of land clearing (and property rights) that sets up the conflict, which itself she uses as an entry point into a discussion about environmental destruction and our future. The book manages to be both highly reflective and informative, and a tense true crime account of a family on the wrong side of the law who firmly believe they are on the right side of morality.
The character sketches here are what leavens the density of the exposition. Ian Turnbull, an octogenarian patriarch in jeans and an Akubra, heads up a clan intent on ignoring the law, unbelieving that any legislation can prevent them from sowing crops in Australia's most expensive soil. A man who allegedly burns koala corpses en masse so his land is not allocated to their protection and still believes he is the good guy, is drawn with respect. Glen Turner, the passionate, occasional inhaler of an enforcement officer is also accorded respect without hagiography.
But at its heart, this is a story about how we set laws and fail to make them stick. About the conflict between the right to pursue profit and the rights of a commons is endlessly fought around settlement, fences and ploughs. It raises the big questions of whether we have the systems to allow ourselves to protect the environment we need to survive. And it is about communities: how they create succour and how they can also prevent difficult conversations that might, in turn, prevent worse.
It is a great book.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In the past 25 years alone, after 10,000 years of agriculture, humans are estimated to have destroyed a tenth of the Earth’s remaining wilderness.
Some projections are apocalyptic. Others bet on adaptation. But one thing is certain: him a life will not look as it does now. Solastalgia, that vapourous unease, is a gentle world for an experience that might sound like a scream.
The effect of solastalgia cannot be remedied by going home, as in homesickness, or by massing momentous, as with nostalgia: but it can be solaced, Glenn Albrecht suggests, ‘by the simultaneous restoration and rehabilitation of mental, cultural and biophysical landscapes.’ “

An exploration of land use and environment in Australia against a killing in rural NSW. Recommended reading.

[Lee Kofman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A virtuoso performance! A finest example of what creative nonfiction can do.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nature is not a temple, but a ruin. A beautiful ruin, but a ruin all the same - J. B. MacKinnon

This book starts with three very different quotes unified by the theme of land and our relationship to it. None is the quote above, but it could've easily fit in the set. In many ways, this is a precursor to the whole book.

This is a book about true crime, land law, Australian history, environmental politics, and relationships and how they can break down. I wasn't expecting this delightful farrago when I started reading - I thought it would be a gripping crime thriller set in the Aussie bush but I'm glad it's so much more.

Really, this is a philosophical musing of humans and their relationship to land. References to people and events are incredible but really there for context, seasoning for the main course. This book doesn't have a true end, it struggles to know how to end.

Despite the small amount of hope Kate London squeezed in, the situation is ever more hopeless. We've always been a land of floods and fire but now there is seemingly no medium among the extemes. Koalas and other animals are starving and dehydrated while native flora is mindlessly cleared for profit - with all this egged on by a corrupt government, in particular the Liberal-National coalition.

It's not just reckless but grossly negligent. Like the interrelated issue of climate change, it is already too late to start doing better but we have to save what we can. London doesn't say this as an eco-warrior - she is a fair journalist and she sympathetically tries to show both sides - but it's the inevitable and only ethical conclusion.

I wasn't always happy reading this book. Some bits were repetitive and wandering. But the subject matter, depth of research undertaken and depth of thought it evoked in me deserves 5 stars. Not many will find this easy reading but it should be mandatory for every Australian, especially any that claim interest in the environment, history, and our shared future.

[Olwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important book, and such a difficult topic. Such an awful outcome.

The author provides an incisive analysis of the history and culture leading up to the murder of a Government environmental compliance officer by a farmer. Somehow, she manages to present the opposing perspectives of everyone involved.

Included is the local cultural history, the invasion of Australia, the changing statutory regulations that can be inconsistent across state and federal jurisdictions. The awfulness too, of how these factors culminated in a murder that shattered two families and hurt many others.

I had to read this book in short sessions, and never just before bedtime; it was just too disturbing.

[Lyra Belarmino · Rating 2 out of 5]

For those who loved it, good on ya , but this book is not for me. Too boring! Piqued my interest reading the synopsis, thinking it's true crime mystery or something but it turned out to be a narrative of some sorts, like a school textbook about agricultural history, makes me think an agenda is being pushed by just the mention of climate change & carbon emissions. Eventually the government is going to get rid of the farmers , and we will be eating ze bugs 😅 . And the story about Saturn (aka Satan ) who ate his own people? Think about that.

[Clive Parkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps the first time that an audiobook pushed the agenda too much for me. That’s fine with an “all crime” novel, but this with its historical reflections of European farming and geography made it too much. Was scoping this for a possible VCE Literature text - but this is a no. Didn’t finish it but wasn’t inclined to follow through the actual events of the murder even though that was the primary interest.

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content warnings: gun violence, murder, blood, grief

3.5 stars

The opening pages of this were utterly gripping. And then it somehow ended up being more than a little dry. It was less true crime and more environmental management/destruction than I anticipated, and I was kind of bummed because I wanted it to be more on the true crime side of things.

That being said, one of my former colleagues who's an environmental historian is quoted in it, so that was an unexpected surprise.

(Mostly I read this because it's on the VCAA Literature text list)

[Jonathan Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superlative piece of non-fiction writing: the best book I've read this year.

Though it seems to be about a 'small' subject (especially to readers outside Australia), the murder of environmental officer Glen Turner by farmer Ian Turnbull, Holden successfully teases out all the ways in which this crime links to and embodies larger questions about our relationship to the land. As such, it deals with the entire history of white settlement in Australia, and the global climate crisis caused in part by our ruthless and exploitative attitudes to the places we inhabit. It's also very much a case study in the politics of ressentiment, a term Holden only mentions once, but which links this crime to global political trends in the US and UK. Turner was killed for attempting to prevent illegal land clearing of native species on Turnbull's properties: or rather for being the person Turnbull fixated upon as the supposed mastermind of a larger legal effort by several agencies, even though Turner was not directly involved in that effort for much of the previous two years prior to the murder. 'Land clearing' sounds like a trivial offence – and certainly that's how Turnbull regarded it, insofar as he was prepared to consider it an offence at all – but the destruction of native vegetation is also the destruction of habitat for animals like koalas, and of the entire native ecosystem. Part of the problem is that such destruction has long been considered part of the process of commercial land development in Australia, and in previous generations was even encouraged - the idea of conserving the native ecosystem is a belated one.

What's painfully apparent from the account is how impotent the state was to prevent the Turnbull family from carrying out illegal clearing. Multiple investigations, warnings, court cases, fines, orders to undertake remedial efforts: much of it simply ignored by a man determined to do whatever he wanted to do, and who experienced the ineffectual efforts of the state to hold him accountable as persecution and then as an existential threat so acute as to warrant murder.

I'm perennially disappointed by popular non-fiction, by its privileging of quirky voice over depth of analysis. Symbolic of this is a common gambit of interviewing an expert in person, often including a narrative account of the interview itself, of the trip to get there and the subject's office, say. Or, you know, you could just read their work, instead of thinking that an hour in their presence is somehow more meaningful than a detailed engagement with their ideas. Holden has done the work here – including in-depth interviews, but the results of these are presented carefully and respectfully, as attempts to really *listen* to what someone has to say. There is a small coda in which Holden steps out of the shadows: it feels entirely appropriate.

Holden's first book, a memoir about being a heroin addict and a sex worker, was a notable success, but one of the unfortunate side-effects of literary success based on personal experience with such a subject is that it often seems conditional on being willing to accept that you have no contribution to make on anything else. You're forever tagged as the resident expert on sex work, and publishers and audiences insist that you stay in that box. I hope The Winter Road is sufficient proof that Holden is one of Australia's finest non-fiction writers, whatever the subject she chooses to write about.

[Ron Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read her sex worker memoir, In My Skin in 2005 and saw her at the Sydney Writers Festival. Over subsequent years I read various pieces by her in different magazines and journals. In my reading about her I read that she is Tim Flannery’s partner.
I clearly remember hearing of the murder of Glen Turner. I vaguely remember how angry I was when I heard Barnaby Joyce trying to justify his murder by a disgruntled farmer.
This is the background to me coming to read what has turned out to be the reading discovery of 2022. This is a masterpiece of writing and research. It blends a story of the crime of murder with an analysis of the relationship of humans with the land, the philosophical history of the Anglo world and its attitude to the land and its usage. The book also discusses our unique usage and the laws and policies that have arisen in an attempt to manage our ancient soil, vegetation and animal life.
The Winter Road is Talga Lane a short road that ran along one of farmer, Ian Turnbull’s property. It is a couple of kilometres from the small settlement of Croppa Creek 70 kilometres northeast of Moree. I would suggest readers look at the area using Apple maps or Google Earth to see the location and view the intense land use.
After reading this book I realised that there is a contradiction in the philosophies and beliefs of vegans. Even if you only eat plant matter, as a human you still contribute to animal cruelty, death and extinction. Thousands of animals die every time land is cleared for crops.
Ian Turnbull was an aged farmer who had acquired a sizeable amount of land and he intended to remove as much native vegetation for the sowing of crops. His assets ran into the millions of dollars, and he wasn’t going to let any government agency get in his way.
I don’t think I have ever cried when reading a non-fiction book. Some have made me sad, angry, cynical and upset but non have brought me to tears. The callous murder of an Australian everyman made me well up with tears. I was probably crying for myself. I am Glen Turner, an Australian man in government employment who believes in his work, is meticulous in following policy, tries always to be civil but wont be cowered by bullies. I cried for Glen’s wife, sister, and children. I felt for work mates, especially Robert Strange, Turner’s co-worker who had to plead for his life, watch his friend die and live with the psychological torture and then listen to Turnbull’s lawyer and some locals and some National Party politicians blame Turner himself for his own death. That’s where the tears dried up and were replaced with searing anger and hatred.
The murder is the core of the text but Holden goes into great detail on the philosophy, history and science on the relationship between those who use the land for profit and those who see land owners have a responsibility of farming but also caring for the land. Holden quotes people such as Locke. She quotes numerous ecologists, scientists and activists. Funny enough she quotes her partner, Tim Flannery.
It has been an enlightening and powerful journey the reading of this well researched and well written book.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to put a bit of distance between finishing the book and writing this review. It’s an impeccably researched and compelling story that has a terrible beginning, middle and end. And I couldn’t stop reading it.

Holden takes a terrible crime and puts it in its proper context, the changing uses of our land from the time of dispossession of First Nations people’s in 1788 to today. I don’t mean to say that this context is to blame for Ian Trumbull’s actions in July 2014. That is on him completely, as are the actions of those who sought to excuse or justify his conduct. But it explains the long history of mismanagement of this land that is still occurring today.

This murder had a profound impact on me at the time and it hasn’t abated over time. I have worked in a number similar occupations during my life and I understood how and why Glen Turner was doing what he did. Glen Turner was murdered because he was simply doing his job.

I think Holden, in trying to explain a series of cruel and inexplicable acts, has told a story of the profound and irreversible impact of our colonisation, greed, entitlement and mismanagement of land. It’s a story we should all read.

[Jillwilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book won the 2021 Walkley Book Award. It explores the 2014 killing of environmental officer Glen Turner by 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull outside Croppa Creek in New South Wales. That’s why I picked it up; I must have seen the TV program about the killing and was a bit intrigued. It’s not what I expected but I found it a really interesting, albeit demanding, read.

In an interview, Kate Holden said that she could not write it as one might expect (prior to reading, I had placed this book in the genre of the writing of Helen Garner or Chloe Hooper – where they explore a complex crime, the perpetrator, the victim, and the ways in which the justice system takes care of or frustrates our perceptions of fairness and justice.) Holden said that by the time she engaged with the story, the court case was over and, in fact, both men were dead. Most family members from both families were not willing to speak with her. Of the focus for the book she said: “The words ‘land-clearing’, ‘government inspection officer’ and ‘property developing farmer’ weren’t thrilling, but the scenario was, once I panned out a bit and saw the huge cultural, landscape, political, historical and sociological context of where they stood. It’s a long story about why we have laws governing land management at all; who enforces them and why; why there is resistance; how we balance ideas of individual agency and common responsibility. In the terrible death of Glen Turner at the impassive hands of Ian Turnbull I saw a parable for the whole history of white development in the continent called Australia.” (https://medium.com/the-walkley-magazi...)

This is how she describes Turnbull: "He’s patriarch of the clan, with four sons and fifteen grandchildren. Been married to Robeena, Rob, for fifty-five years. He’s a big man of the little town, given money when locals need a hand, but kept out of the papers – nothing exceptional, nothing showy. Mates with everyone impartial, and the best lawyers. Began with one farm, and now look at him. Not afraid to think big, to think of his family to come."

In 2012, the Turnbull family bought two properties knowing that clearing would be prohibited. Under the direction of Ian Turnbull, they started clearing before the contracts were signed. They cleared when they were prosecuted, they cleared the areas ordered to be remediated, they cleared as they awaited decision on a second set of charges. It was a race to get the land suitable for large-scale cropping before environmental restrictions caught up with them. Populations of kolas dies, native brigalow was cleared, all sorts of small ecologies wrecked in the process. And the bureaucracy responsible for protecting the environment attempted to intervene with stop work orders but these were ignored. Glenn Turner represented this bureaucracy. Turnbull saw Turner’s presence as a threat to his small empire and thought Turner had a personal vendetta against him. Two years before the murder, at the gates of his property, Turnbull said to Turner: “I’m an old man, I don’t care. I can do anything I want.” And after the murder, Turnbull said from prison, “What I have done is dropped a bomb to wake people up to what’s going on.”

Holden weaves this very personal and sad story through a much broader discussion about the nature of land ownership – and what we should be entitled to do to the land we “own”. “The fundamental question that weaves through The Winter Road is about land: does it owe us its wealth, or do we owe it? Who are the custodians of Australian nature? What does it mean to own land, and who are you responsible to? “Must progress destroy its own foundations – and future, as it goes? Or must everything be maintained as it has been, forfeiting the potential of change? And in my opinion, the trickiest question of all: who decides?” (https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...)

She outlines the influence of philosophers such as John Locke who believed that when a man applied labour to the soil, it became his. She notes that the colonisation of Australia coincided with a point in European history that favoured progress through the enclosure and ‘improvement’ of land. Australia was deemed “terra nullius” – there was no thought given to approaches to cultivation used by First Nations peoples, developed over thousands of years. She creates a picture of the richness of this land at Croppa Creek – it has been spared European forms of farming and the nitrogen levels in the soil are off the scale. It is tantalisingly ripe for development. ‘He’d [Turnbull] bought the block for the black soil there, the last of it. It needed to have a crop on it, and that’s what he was going to do.’

A reviewer says: “Clearing became a contentious subject after stronger regulations were introduced in the 1990s. The political will to enforce the laws dissipated. The departments responsible were under-resourced, enforcement was rare, and only the worst cases were prosecuted. Holden’s reflective passages explore the cultural myths and ideologies that shaped these circumstances. The context is the invasion and settlement of inland Australia: the intersection of ideas that justified violence and dispossession and fed an obsession with transforming ecologies into an agrarian ideal. Those who ‘battled the land’ were fêted. A frontier mentality persisted. Private property was absolute.” (https://www.australianbookreview.com....)

This is a devastating book. It’s not an easy read – the stats on land clearing are even worse now than they were when the murder took place. Bushfires and natural disasters are wreaking havoc with native animals and land and sea ecologies. It’s not easy to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. There have been many failures. Chris Nadolny, the ecologist who accompanied Turner on his investigations, admits that ‘we haven’t really done what we should have done to explain to farmers the value of native vegetation’. Holden write of the ‘mesh of state and federal legislation’… ‘is a tangle, overlapping a network of state-level regulations with further weavings of national laws, different supervising ministerial departments and various authorities’. She suggests it is not entirely surprising that Turnbull ‘pleaded ignorance of some of it’.

Holden seeks to understand the different positions in the clearing debate; she wants us to comprehend Turnbull as an ordinary person. Many people shared his views and supported his violence. He represents a type: those seething with resentment and victimhood, who believe the system is against them. I kept thinking about the people that I know who are farmers – and how they would respond to this story – and this book. And about a line I read yesterday in another book – Darren Chester, the Victorian Nationals politician assaying “The further you are away from the natural environment, the more likely you are to vote Green”. I don’t have to wrestle a living from the land. But it must be possible to find better solutions than the one that the Turnbulls wanted for that land in Croppa Creek.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly complex story of environmental legislation, legal aspects of land ownership, inheritance laws, philosophy of land use, and Aboriginal treatment of land and much more, are hung around the true story of 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull who shoots environmental officer Glen Turner in the back on a lonely road outside Croppa Creek, New South Wales in July 2014. Turnbull was a traditional farmer hoping to secure his family's wealth on the richest agricultural soil in the country, obsessed with th government officer trying to apply environmental laws. The philosophical basis is old: in UK formerly, if you worked the land and developed it, it was yours and you could do what you liked with it. After First Nations people’s guardianship, and Thos Paine and Rousseau, came environmentalists who believe in stewardship of the land: you can profit from what grows, but the land is a commons. Law has it both ways, and where conservative govts rule the former takes precedence. In Moree farmers like Turnbull cleared the land targeting especially brigalow and other native plants that nitrogenised the soil and provided shelter for many endangered species, koalas in particular. Turnbull was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years but died in prison after 2. The Office of Environment and Heritage won in this case, but change of laws by the NSW Govt made conditions even worse in 2017. More clearing than ever took place. Holden skips from this story to the background and complex issues which makes for highly focused and d very clever in her mastery of these complex issues but really too detailed, inviting skipping.

[Lesley Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ‘blurb’ suggests this is a journalist’s ‘true crime’ reconstruction of a killing. If that’s what you’re looking for then this isn’t the book for you. What Holden does do is place that murder at the heart of a deep examination of the history and philosophy of land use in Australia, and the politics and economics of environment. Weaving the story of Ian Campbell and Glen Turner through that is an inspired choice. However I couldn’t in all honesty give 5 stars because there were times when I wanted a little more of the first kind of book and a little less of the ‘PhD thesis’ style of book it became in parts. Dialling (not necessarily dumbing) it down just a notch in terms of the verbal acrobatics would have made this book and its important themes more accessible to more people. And that would have been a good thing.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and sobering. Dark Emu gave me a richer sense of the rich, moist, soft soils that have been destroyed. Call of the Reed Warbler gave me a sense of the potential to rebuild soils and environmental health. The Winter Road helped with understanding the cultural and political factors that are undermining our environmental health, and the magnitude of recent destruction. Not uplifting, but an important read.

[Devilish · Rating 4 out of 5]

the stories of the people involved in the death of Glen Turner, a compliance officer in NSW, killed while doing his job. Also a deep look at how and why Australians farm, their relationship to the land, and the legislation and policies that have shaped these attitudes.

[Marianne Locke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie, part 3 was a struggle....

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I think of a ranger being killed, my mind skips immediately to Kenya and those brave, short, sinewy green-clad men of the Kenya Wildlife Service. The idea of a ranger being killed in Australia is so jarring that it is immediately memorable, and that’s the way it was for Kate Holden when Glen Turner was shot in Talga Lane, Croppa Creek, near Moree in 2014. His murderer, Ian Turnbull, aged 79 died in prison of heart attack, after being sentenced to 35 years imprisonment.

This book is quite a change from Kate Holden’s previous books: the first, In My Skin a wonderful memoir of heroin addiction and sex work; the second The Romantic: Italian Nights and Days a follow-up autobiography. Here she shuttles between reportage and reflection on a real-life crime which extends beyond a cold dirt road in Croppa Creek to a broader meditation on land, legacy and its meaning not just for Ian Turnbull and Glen Turner, but for both black and white Australians more generally.

We know that Glen Turner dies because she tells us, in the short prologue. The book then divides into three sections: Trespass, Murder and Inheritance. There is a chronological progress through the crime – lead-up, crime, and consequences- but the chapters themselves interweave a range of themes. Take Chapter Two, for example. It starts with a description of the Brigalow Belt that extends between Townsville and mid-NSW, the qualities of Brigalow Acacia harpohylla, the story of wheat in Australia, land-clearing legislation, clashes between Ian Turnbull and the Office of Environment and Heritage, land-clearing around Moree, and interactions between Turner and Turnbull. There is observation, reportage of conversations that Holden has held with the main protagonists, and desktop research drawing on the work of ecologists and historians. This interweaving continues throughout the book but I, as reader, I always felt that she was in control of the narrative, moving it steadily forward.

The book starts with the theme of ‘Trespass’, and there are different types of trespass at work here. Ian Turnbull’s trespass against the environmental law of the land; his accusation that Glen Turner, as a representative of government, was trespassing against his rights as a land-owner; the original trespass of white settlement onto indigenous land.

The emotional heart of the book for me comes in part 2 ‘Murder’, where she takes a slow-motion view of the murder. Here, too, there is an interweaving between the physical murder of Glen Turner, and the ecological ‘murder’ of the brigalow through the voracious demand for agricultural land. The murder itself, with Glen Turner and his old colleague Robert Strange bailed up by the gun-wielding Ian Turnbull in their departmental ute, took between twenty and thirty minutes. Twenty to thirty minutes. I think of shoot-outs or physical fights which, however long they might appear to the protagonists, are over in minutes. The thought of this deliberate, drawn out, highly personal, game of cat and mouse at sunset on a lonely dirt road is chilling.

Part 3 ‘Inheritance’ looks at the fall-out from the murder, for Ian Turnbull and his family; for Glen Turner’s family; for Robert Strange and other government employees; for the broader Croppa Creek community. It has truly been a poisoned inheritance. It seemed to me at the start of the book that she was at pains to represent all sides fairly, or at least to acknowledge the validity of their viewpoint from their perspective. But in Part 3, especially with the passing of weakened environmental laws that rendered Glen Turner’s death completely futile, it seems that Holden cannot withhold her judgment any longer. This is not a weakness: on the contrary, it would be weakness to continue to stand on the sidelines after all the exhaustive research she has undertaken.

This is non-fiction writing at its best. It is founded in research, which has been integrated with observation, conversation and reflection. It travels much further than that dirt road at sunset, interrogating Western society’s relationship with land and what it means to ‘own’ property. It is a beautiful piece of work

[Christine Yunn-Yu Sun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Authored by journalist Kate Holden, The Winter Road is the winner of the 2021 Walkley Book Award. It also won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Douglas Stewart Nonfiction Prize, 2022 NSW Premier’s History Awards – Community and Regional History Prize, and 2022 Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Nonfiction Crime.

The book has a chilling subtitle: “A story of legacy, land and a killing at Croppa Creek.” Specifically, the cold-blooded murder took place on a dirt road in the farming country near Moree in northwest New South Wales.

On July 29, 2014, 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull shot environmental compliance officer Glen Turner in the back. The old man clearly knew what he was doing. He was a good shooter, too, the four bullets from his .22 targeting the officer’s neck. Afterwards, he dropped the gun and went home to wait for the police.

Turnbull was sentenced to 35 years in jail and a non-parole period of 22 years, but the case is much, much more about the killing. It is about a farmer’s desire to secure his family’s legacy on the richest agricultural soil in Australia. It is about his sense of entitlement over the land that he lived and worked on.

That sense of entitlement is perhaps best conveyed through the following words from English philosopher John Locke in 1860, which were quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1839 to justify European possession of the Australian continent:

“Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

But there is an important distinguishment to make between “land” and “property”. As Holden explains, our ownership of a property does not and should not mean we have every right to destroy the plants and animals living on the land. Even more fundamentally flawed is our taking for granted of the land as properties that can be owned and “improved”.

The author’s argument is compelling: At the heart of European colonisation is violence against the land. By claiming this continent as “terra nullius”, land is seen as an opportunity for seizure and personal advantage. “The strongest, the first, the most vigorous or powerful take the spoils. Once seized, it is theirs. Anyone who wants something of it will have to pay.”

The Winter Road is an intense and confronting read, as it draws on multiple philosophical, cultural and environmental sources to illustrate the history of our nation’s violence against native ecologies. There is much to digest, but the overwhelming impression is haunting.

Sadly, in the same way that Turnbull said he was sorry to kill Turner but it did not amount to remorse, such haunting impression is perhaps mixed with a sense of powerlessness in the face of an agricultural tradition that we have long been told inspires a sense of achievement and pride. This is indeed a quintessential Australian story.

Note: This book review was originally titled “An intense, confronting read” and published under the title “Intense and confronting” by Ranges Traders Star Mail, October 25, 2022, P.16.

[Averil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't the cheeriest read but it's an important text for examining terra nullius and the impact settlement has had on the environment.

I first thought this book was going to be true crime-y based on the tagline, but the killing mentioned on the front cover occurs in the first pages and there is no whodunnit element. However, the whydunnit is critical to the story.

Kate Holden takes the crime - the killing of a government environment officer - and takes us on a journey through the connection humans have to land, and in particular what humans have done to the land since settlement.

The plot is simple. A white farming family have purchased land with native bush on it and begin clearing it, in breach of various acts. The government start investigating the clearing, to which the family patriarch takes offence. There is a confrontation and a government officer is shot and killed.

What makes this book interesting is its examination of why some farmers feel they have the right to clear native vegetation from land they own, even when legislation forbids it. The author contrasts this attitude with how indigenous Australians cultivated the land, understanding how to treat it with respect for long-term sustainability.

She quotes Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who talks about 'solastalgia', a combo of solace, desolation and nostalgia, that describes 'a sense of homesickness when one is not far from home, but when home itself has become unhomely and strange'. As Albrecht writes, solastalgia can be solved 'by the simultaneous restoration and rehabilitation of mental, cultural and biophysical landscapes'. In other words, if we feel solastalgia at environmentally unsound projects such as new coal mines or deforestation, we must actively work to reverse their effects as much as possible. 

Holden takes us through important moments in Australia's enviro-political history, and the more recent court cases associated with illegal clearing: 'So much paperwork. So many trees felled to argue about the felling and keeping of trees'. 

The balance in this book of legal, emotional, cultural, political and environmental concerns gives it wide appeal, but it is also an angering read. 

Check out my book reviews at www.instagram.com/avrbookstuff.
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[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

by Kate Holden


Finish date: 16.10.2025
Genre: Australian non-fiction
Rating: B
#NonFicNov25


Good News: There is an art to writing the perfect prologue to a book...that will grab and then drag me into the book. Bravo, Kate Holden!


Bad News: I've struggled with this book more than I expected. My first impression was not favourable but I let my mind digest this impulse and think more about the book and its broader meaning to somebody who is Australian.


Good News: I learned more about the ecology of the land of Moree Australia and Coppa Creek. It is not easy to understand the deep and complicated relationships Australians have with the land, colonisation and the destruction of the treasured environment that began with European settlement.


Personal: The book has more layers to it than I noticed my reading. I did have to research it more to try to understand why this book won The Walkley Award for Best Book 2021. I've read many Walkley winners and trust the jury to know a winner when they see it. Why did I not see that The Winter Road was a winner?

I expected a true crime book similar Helen Garner's This House of Grief dealing with a legal and criminal case that was riveting to read. Do not expect that in The Winter Road . Ms Holden worked for four years researching documents etc and interviews with people involed to draw attention to the broader issue of land clearing and environmental destruction.

I was not enthusiastic about the book....but later realised Ms Holden was not to hear to please me but explain how deforestation changed Australian lives and shattered families for a generations.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2014 an environment compliance officer was shot and killed by a farmer in a small local road in northern NSW. There were events leading up to this, from the invasion of Europeans to Australia, the attempt to form a land owning dynasty in the rich black soil south of Moree to the attempts of Govt environment officers to protect the land and the trees and the animals. Then there was the horrific science of the shooting and the hours before and after. There is the court case and then the court cases as the farmer’s family splinters and divides.
And there is an engrossing last section where Kate Holden looks to the future and the possible options available as the rich black soil is degraded each year. Options but possibilities that may not be taken by the people who make the decisions. It is a section of hopes but with plenty of options that lead to despair.
This is a terrific book. The writer writes about the history of the area, the court case, the politics and the different styles of land management and she does this with such an easy style that makes difficult subjects clear and easy to understand.
And she presents people who are so vivid I feel that I know them.

[Prue Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

NSW Road trip 2022, recommended by a local librarian. Set around on the murder of an environmental enforcement officer for NSW Govt, by a landholder who was illegally clearing vegetation, in about 2015. Partly a fascinating analysis of the legal and personal belief system behind land ownership, as the convicts and pastoralists were leaving UK, and therefore brought with them. Partly an analysis of the development and enforcement of native veg protection law and systems in NSW, from about 1970 to the present day. Partly about the details of and nature of the people involved in this particular case, both pastoralist family (3 generations), and the staff involved. I found the first and 3rd elements the most fascinating, the development native of veg legislation I skimmed, as it was very detailed. The politics behind it more interesting to me. An enthralling read.

[Laura Aston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This well-written and skilfully narrated book provides timely insigh into value systems in tension in Australia: that of the embattled Australian farmer and the nation's conservation interests. The book is structured around the events preceding and following the tragic murder of conservation officer, Glen Turner. His death served to highlight the shortcomings, in both structure and implementation, of Australia's biodiversity legislation. in this way, the book provides a constructive policy commentary.

Will appeal to those who enjoy Gabrielle Chan's writing about Australian regional and agricultural interests, or similar cultural accounts in American writing such as Hillbilly Ellegy (J.D. Vance) and Educated (Tara Westover)

[Alex Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just excellent. I bought this expecting a journalistic coverage of the Croppa Creek murder, and got SO much more. Holden uses the central events as a launching pad for an extended examination of land clearing, Australia's relationship to the environment as a whole, a history of environmentalism, colonialism, commercial farming, humanity's relationship to nature, and so much more. It is insightful, incisive, deeply disturbing, and yet offering some glimpses of hope and possible alternatives to the grim reality of our current devastated environment in Australia. A must-read for anyone remotely interested in Australian environment today and where we are headed.