University of Tasmania Prize

The Sand by Cameron Hindrum

Cameron Hindrum

Dr Cameron Hindrum has taught English for close to thirty years at a range of schools around Tasmania and in Queensland. He is an experienced conference and professional learning presenter, preparing and delivering workshops in every Australian capital city on topics such as creative writing, teaching controversial issues, World War One poetry, Teachers as Writers, and teaching Haiku. In addition to a long teaching career, he completed his Doctorate of Creative Arts (Writing) through the University of Wollongong in 2021, and is an Associate in the University of Tasmania School of Humanities. He has published a novel and two collections of poetry and had two plays professionally produced in Tasmania, with Mudlark Theatre and Blue Cow Theatre respectively. His poetry, short fiction and non-fiction have been published by Island, Famous Reporter, Forty South, Pendulum, Askew Poetry Journal and in the cross-cultural Australian-Indian publication Dancing the Light. The Sand is his second novel and he is currently planning his third, while completing his fourth play.

The Sand

The Sand is based loosely on a Tasmanian cold case, the as yet unsolved murder of an Italian backpacker on an east coast beach in broad daylight in October 1995. Events in the novel unfold over a period of approximately 7 days after the body of Maria Fabri is found on the local beach of a small Tasmanian town. Several characters offer their perspectives on the ramifications of this crime on their community, and the conceit of Curated Fiction is used to enact one of them, Sally Ringholt, as curator— the commissioner, collator and editor of the other accounts. Several stories emerge in the wake of an act of shocking violence: stories of acceptance, tolerance, grief, change and compassion. These are underscored by the dawning realisation that, for the people resident in this small coastal town, the world has inexplicably shifted on its axis: the familiar is no longer comfortable, and someone among them has a terrible secret.