Coal Town is the story of the glorious rise and fall of an Australian mining community.
It is a tale of hardship and danger, accidents and disasters – strikes, riots, the suffocating and sometimes dangerous power of unions.
At the same time, it is a chronicle of colonial Australia’s working-class march forward.
In Coal Town, the pub took the place of church. Gambling, fighting, and drinking were as natural as breathing, mateship stronger than marriage. Women held little sway – their responsibilities limited to feeding a hungry miner, breeding and nurturing children, catching fallen pride.
And yet Coal Town was given the almost overwhelming responsibility of powering a new nation into a bright future.
The book starts with the building of the Great North Road in the early part of the nineteenth century.
Along it, we meet the convicts, overseers, magistrates, and free settlers, we encounter bushrangers, priests, preachers and the First Nations people.
With the discovery of coal, we follow the nation through two world wars and a depression, ending our story in the declining years of Coal Town, at a time of overwhelming optimism and hope.
Wayne McLennan, from Cessnock Australia, is the author of Rowing to Alaska, a New York Times notable book of 2005 and Tent Boxing, long listed for the William Hill best sport book of Britain award, both published by Granta. Zuivere Zijde (Pure Silk) a book of short stories was published in Dutch translation in 2016 and Een Nacht Bij de Rivier (A night by the river) in 2019 in Amsterdam, Holland by Atlas Contact. His short stories have a been published in Granta, Griffith Review, the Bulletin, Quadrant, and the New Asia Literary Review, as well as various Dutch literary publications.
Some lucky people have a natural gift for writing. Wayne McLennan’s prose is gloriously effortless. His ability to describe people, landscapes and everyday incidents is of the highest order’ - Review of Rowing to Alaska
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
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