Ruby Moonlight a novel of the impact of colonisation in mid north South Australia around 1880 The main character Ruby refugee of a massacre shelters in the woods where she befriends an Irishman trapper The poems convey how fear of discovery is overcome by the need for human contact which in a tense unravelling of events is forcibly challenged by an Aboriginal lawman The natural world is richly observed and Rubys courtship is measured by the turning of the seasons