There is not much to dislike about this strong, determined woman who, through luck and circumstance, manages to live a life unimpeded by people’s expectations. Ingrid’s doting father is rich, so she doesn’t need to marry, which is just as well because she has no intention of doing so. Betrayed and hurt that her girlfriend of eight years has just done exactly that, Ingrid has set out on this trip.

She meets Ellyn, an Englishwoman who dislikes her new Australian landscape and nurtures an English garden in the middle of it. Ellyn, fragile and overwrought, makes this familiar story tiresome; upon her arrival, the sense of caricature is heightened. The women’s relationship lacks nuance, and the prose is often mechanical.

However, at times this book crackles. The landscape, the town and the people living there are dexterously portrayed, and many characters deserve more space. The handling and recording of flowers makes for absorbing reading, as do the ongoing postal problems that prevent Ellyn’s husband’s letters from arriving on time. Anyone interested in what life was like for a headstrong lesbian in nineteenth-century Australia will not be disappointed, but it is a shame that we have to put up with Ellyn’s whining along the way.