WINNER CBCA BOOK OF THE YEAR 1974

Sudden and savage came the Nargun's cry, bellowing down from the mountain, full of all time and the darkness between the stars. It held them at the door where it rang between mountains and died away. Charlie pushed Simon inside the door.

'We made it angry,' whispered Simon.

When Simon Brent's parents are killed in a car accident he is taken to live with his mother's cousins, Edie and Charlie, on Wongadilla, their 5000 acre sheep station in the Hunter Valley. Simon, with his city attitudes, feels lik an outsider.

But Simon is not the only thing that doesn't belong. The arrival of heavy machinery intent on clearing the land brings to life the Nargun, a great rock, older than time itself, that has slowly dragged itself into the valley - and with it, a simmering rage that drives it to kill.

Steeped in mythology, The Nargun and the Stars evokes an image of this land and its people, and carries an environmental message as relevant today as it was thirty years ago.