Permutations of luck drive the narrative. The Johnson family arrives at Port Badminton in 1964, the same year in which Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country was published, with electronic go-to man Evan Johnson – a ‘practical’ man ‘wearing horn-rimmed glasses in the style of Donald Horne’ – enjoying the benefits of white male privilege as he helps ready the tracking station for its part in the space race. Linda Johnson, however, having quickly perfected her façade as a ‘Better Than Normal’ housewife, is bored and unsatisfied. As plot complications develop and Evan’s fortunes fall, some of those marginalised by gender and race – even species – find a better, companionable fate.

Sorensen plays adroitly with the sometimes fine distinctions between truth and fiction in narrative strategies that rarely feel forced: Lucky might seem voiceless – an outsider – but she crafts an engaging story from her observations and the ‘rueful thoughts’ of humans beamed to her by the Dish, sifting and shaping, inventing scenes, giving tantalising hints of events to come.

The Lucky Galah can be appreciated on many levels – as an affectionately ironic commentary on a generation, an investigation into the nature of luck, a prompt to examine what constitutes ‘an Australian’, a contemporary redressing of past imbalances, or as a delightful flight of fancy.