Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Eucalyptus is Murray Bail's best and most moving novel. On a country property a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all his species of eucalypt, down to the last tree. Suitors emerge from all corners, including the formidable, straight-backed Mr Cave, world expert on the varieties of eucalypt. And then, walking among her father's trees, Ellen chances on a strange young man who in the days that follow tells her dozens of stories set in cities, deserts, faraway countries...Eucalyptus is both a modern fairy tale and an unpredictable love story played out against the searing light and broken shadows of country Australia.