Review: Pilbara
Author: Judy Nunn
Judy Nunn is an Australian former actress, screenwriter, and a highly successful, best-selling author of historical fiction novels. I have read a few of her books and was eager to read her latest about an area in Australia called the Pilbara (a large, sparsely populated, arid region in the north of Western Australia, renowned for its ancient landscapes, significant Aboriginal cultural heritage, and vast mineral deposits).
In this book, a family arrives in the harsh, lawless frontier of the Pilbara in the late 1800s - a father with his three young children, having come all the way from Yorkshire to rebuild their family’s sheep and cattle property. Life in this ancient landscape is brutal and they fight to survive as greed intensifies. Spanning from Yorkshire to Cossack, Western Australia, Pilbara is the story of a family determined to restore their honour and build a future.
Rather strangely, I enjoyed the story’s early chapters set in Yorkshire far more than its later shift to Australia. Once the setting move to the Pilbara, the pacing felt slower, and several plot points struck me as predictable, questionable, or simply unrealistic. Still, the novel ultimately highlights the resilience and sacrifices women make to protect their homes, their families, and their futures.
Title: Pilbara
Author: Judy Nunn
Publisher: 28th October 2025 by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Pages: 419 pages
Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Historical Fiction | New Adult
