June in Her Spring — Colin MacInnes

Australia, 1950. The rarely-spotted duck-billed platypus is rumoured to bring you luck. Sixteen-year-old June Westley is an ideal daughter - kind, considerate, loving, and far more at ease in the Bush pioneered by her forefathers than her own father, Arthur, who spends his days waxing the Buick in the Australian sun. One day she spots a platypus and, sure enough, luck seems to shine down on her when she falls in love with a young musician. At first their affair is enchanting and passionate; but soon they are forced to confront family hostility and jealousies, and the heritage of madness and homosexuality that threaten to destroy their relationship. A sympathetic picture of outsiders in a cloistered world, June in Her Spring is an idyllic and sensuous tale of the confusion, horror and tentative delights of first love.