The French corvette l'Astrolabe sails into Westernport, the scientists on board intent on drawing, recording, classifying. A century later Anna and Jasper Black, pioneering believers in the notion of progress, come to test their belief that the land can be made to serve their purposes. Now landscape photographer Jack Cameron, lost, drifting, struggles with their past to find a purpose his own life lacks. This bold and impressive novel interweaves narrative strands from past and present to create a world that is familiar yet disturbingly strange. Landscape becomes an obsession, photographs throw up unsettling images distilled from the past, reality and imagination begin to shift...