Some places keep secrets.
The novel
Whispering Ridge
When the Bromley family leaves Sydney for a remote property in the Northern Rivers, they are looking for space, quiet and a different kind of life. Whispering Ridge seems to offer all three: a weathered house beneath an ancient volcanic mountain, horses in the paddocks, rainforest falling into deep green gullies, and a small country town where everyone seems to know a little more than they say. But the longer the family stays, the harder it becomes to dismiss the feeling that something about the ridge was waiting for them.
Then there is Stefan LeMalin — part-time barista, local eccentric and an increasingly improbable fixture in the Bromleys’ lives. Funny, theatrical and impossible not to like, Stefan has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the occult and an opinion on almost everything else. What begins as another of his eccentricities becomes harder to dismiss when strange events around the mountain start falling into patterns he recognises.
Set among the mist-filled valleys, old families and hidden roads of the Northern Rivers, Whispering Ridge is a rural noir steeped in occult knowledge, local secrets and the unsettling limits of what we can explain. As curiosity becomes obsession and coincidence begins to acquire intent, the Bromleys discover that some places do more than keep their secrets. They choose who gets close enough to find them.
They came to the Northern Rivers looking for a different life.
A house beneath the mountain.
A family beginning again.
A town where everyone seems connected.
Where nothing is unseen. It is simply not always mentioned.
From the manuscript
Most local groups are harmless. Some are merely book clubs with nudity.
A few are not.
Cults never introduce themselves as cults. They offer belonging. Ancient knowledge. Personal transformation. A private gathering somewhere beautiful.
Bring a plate.
Wear white.
Tell no one.
Beyond the towns, gravel roads climb into the hills. Mobile reception fails. Streetlights end.
People come here for privacy.
Adorable.
There is no privacy in the bush.
Neighbours notice unfamiliar cars. Farmers remember number plates. Old women at markets know who has left whom and who was seen driving towards the mountain after midnight.
Nothing is unseen.
It is simply not always mentioned.
Then the first warm wind passes through the valley. Trees flower. Green shoots rise through the blackened cane fields, and clouds gather once more above Mount Wulaman.
The country turns.
The forest settles around whatever it has been given.
And everything required is brought quietly into place.
Then there is Stefan.
It turned out the barista’s name was Stefan Molyneux. Or LeMeilleur. Or maybe LeMalin. Will could never quite remember. Stefan had said it once, quickly, and Will hadn’t caught it, and by now it was too late to ask. Stefan never corrected him when he got it wrong. He just smiled under the moustache as if Will had said something clever.
They’d run into him again by accident. Stefan had a second job, it turned out, at a little café behind the laundromat in their own town, the kind of place you’d only find if you were looking for the toilets. Will had come across it on one of his early-morning drives with Finn. Some mornings Finn was awake at four and wanted to be moving, so Will took him out in the Land Rover and they drove round until the sun came up, Finn pointing out the window at things, mostly clouds. The café opened at six. It was never busy. The coffee was as good as the Rosewood coffee. And Stefan was always behind the machine, as if he’d been there all night.
After that he just kept turning up. Behind a coffee machine, mostly. Once at the Sunday market, running an incense stall. And now, somehow, at their firepit on a Saturday night...
Fiction,
rooted in something real.
Whispering Ridge is a work of fiction inspired by true events in the mist-bound back country of the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, Australia.
Praise
Praise for Whispering Ridge
Whispering Ridge
Enter the Ridge
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