Nargun and the stars. Patricia Wrightson. 1988.

The Nargun was born of the rocks when the world was first formed; it was part of the Dreamtime; it saw the Aborigines come and go. Later other men came into its plunging, ferny gorges……restless,disturbing men.

The Nargun began to move, dragging its stony weight across 800 miles and down 100 years, sometimes quietly and in peace, sometimes in sudden savage anger. Now it was in the Hunter Valley, at Wongadilla.

Simon Brent also came to Wongadilla; a city boy, lonely, orphaned and resentful. Charlie and Edie, who owned the sheep-run, were his cousins……but old and dull, strangers who were different from the people he had known. It was Wongadilla that first comforted Simon: the mountain, the swamp, and the spirits to which they had always belonged. They were old beyond memory, yet they had always been young.

The Potkoorok played its tricks on Simon; the Turongs worked havoc with the road workers’ equipment; the Nyols rustled and whispered in the rocks. And somewhere on the mountain, grey and still, crouched the monster that did not belong; the Nargun, older than time itself. Avoided by the others, it bided its time until the day Simon stumbled on it. Then the terror began. Then the courage and small strengths of ordinary people must be set against the old primeval forces of true myth.