In Conversation with Tim Ayliffe & Michael Brissenden

Fiction built on a terrifying and confronting reality.

Tim Ayliffe has a particular talent - one that requires both a journalist's instincts and a novelist's nerve - for finding the fiction inside the headline. His new thriller Dark Desert Road is set in the drought-hollowed country west of Wagga Wagga, where a community of sovereign citizens has decided it is done with the rest of us. They own guns. They don't talk to cops. And they are, as it turns out, not entirely fictional.

Sovereign citizens, people who believe they are not subject to government authority, laws, or courts, are a growing movement in Australia. Ayliffe, who spent 25 years reporting the world's worst behaviour for the ABC, knows exactly how these things end. He's written it down so the rest of us can reckon with it safely. From the comfort of an armchair. At 3am, because one simply cannot stop.

Join Tim in conversation with author and broadcaster Michael Brissenden for a conversation about the book, the movement, and the fracture lines running through contemporary Australia.

Books available on the day courtesy of Abbey's Bookshop.

Not one to be missed! Register today.

🎟️ Free for SMSA Members

🎟️ Free for U3A & Older Women's Network Members

🎟️$10 for friends and non-members

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts (SMSA)