Winner of the 2002 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Shortlisted for the 2002 Miles Franklin Literary Award Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all fishes in the sea and all living things on the land were destroyed, there was a man named William Buelow Gould, a white convict who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that to love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer and forger, was condemned to the most feared penal colony in the British Empire and there ordered to paint a book of fish. Once upon a time, there were miracles...