He was supposed to be helping Bub to repair a mast on Lehmann’s Hill, 200km away but worse, his body is 8km away from his car and he was at the stockman’s grave without any shade or water. When Cameron is found dead from exposure and heat exhaustion at a place known locally as the stockman’s grave, no one can understand what he was doing there. Although Nathan and Bub have shares in the family ranch, it’s majority owned and run by Cameron, who lives there with Bub, Harry, his mum Liz, his wife Ilse and their two daughters Sophie and Lo and two itinerant English workers, Katy and Simon. Nathan, Cameron and Bub’s dad Carl died in a car accident when Bub was just a teenager.

One of Nathan’s nearest neighbours is Burley Downs, the ranch he grew up on with his younger brothers, Cameron and Bub, his parents and Harry, a grizzled ranch hand who’s been with the Brights for as long as Nathan can remember. Divorced and shunned by the locals in the nearest small town of Balamara for committing one of the cardinal sins of the Outback, he spends most of his time on his own except for when his ex-wife, Jacqui, allows their 16-year-old son, Xander, to stay with him. It’s a week before Christmas in Queensland, Australia.Ĥ2-year-old Nathan Bright runs a failing cattle farm deep in the Australian Outback.

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Did he choose to walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects … The family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. In an isolated part of Australia, they are each other’s nearest neighbours, their homes hours apart. Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the relenting sun of the outback. Whatever had been going through Cameron’s mind when he was alive, he didn’t look peaceful in death. He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin was cracked.

The lost man book summary