Author talk on analysing bones, gravesites

ACCLAIMED crime fiction author Darcy Tindale will visit Ballarat this month to promote her new novel.

Released last week, Burning Mountain is the follow-up to her 2024 epic The Fall Between, nominated for the Davitt Awards and Ned Kelly Awards.

Tindale – an author and high school drama teacher, who has appeared in films, television commercials and on stage – will appear at the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute on Wednesday 14 May.

Her talk will focus on how to analyse bones and gravesites.

While undertaking research for Burning Mountain, Tindale completed a forensic anthropology and archaeology course at Durham University in England.

As part of the course, she learnt how to decipher a victim’s gender, age and cause of death from their remains and analyse gravesites to determine when someone was buried, whether a murder was premeditated and the importance of picking the right shovel.

She also spoke to several homicide detectives, not only to get their insights from the job but to watch how they interact and behave.

Tindale said Burning Mountain offers a candid portrait of rural Australia, the unspoken secrets that small communities often harbour and the devastating ramifications they can cause.

Drawing inspiration from her childhood in the Upper Hunter Valley, it features the return of Detective Rebecca Giles, the central character from The Fall Between.

In April 2006, fifteen-year-old Oliver vanished without a trace while hiking on Burning Mountain.

His schoolfriends Bob, Bell, Phil and Paul were the last people to see him alive, yet the teenagers were never able to explain his disappearance.

Nearly 20 years later, Detective Giles is called to nearby Mount Wingen, where a skull has been unearthed, reviving the long-standing mystery that has haunted the Upper Hunter for years.

Giles believes they have finally found Oliver and suspects his four friends, now in their mid-30s, have always known more than they first admitted, particularly about the argument that caused Oliver to head down the mountain alone.

But when discussing the case with her retired superintendent father, another suspect emerges, one uncomfortably close to home.

“Burning Mountain explores the lengths we go to in order to protect those we love and the way our upbringing and the actions of our past selves shape the people we become,” Tindale said.

Tickets for In Conversation with Darcy Tindale are available from the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute website. Cost is $11.78.

KIERAN ILES