1No matter how well we plan, we never really know what will happen tomorrow or in a few years from now. We don't have that kind of control over real life. Random events come together in unexpected ways marking a defining moment from when things are never quite the same again. Such is life for the characters in Place of Many Birds. From the suburban streets of Melbourne to the wide plains of the Wimmera, these short stories recreate the rhythms of small town life from the 1890s and into the 1960s. Through the tangle of family relationships and the shock of a sudden death, the characters travel across the landscape of the mind as well as Australia's wide and distant horizons.