
Opera Australia: The Drover’s Wife
11 August 2026 @ 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm AEST

They will say a story ended, those who cannot understand, no-one’s story ends forever, our Dreaming is forever.
Molly Johnson is a survivor. Heavily pregnant, she’s left alone to care for her children in a remote Snowy Mountains shanty.
Between the snakes, bullocks and hostile travellers on her doorstep, she faces no shortage of threats. With her husband away droving sheep, she faces them alone.
But when Yadaka, an Aboriginal man evading colonial authorities, disrupts Molly’s hard-won sanctuary, the pair’s shared history of brutal hardships can no longer be ignored.
The Drover’s Wife is a monumental new opera based on the play, novel and film by one of Australia’s leading artists, Leah Purcell. With a ravishing score by George Palmer, this new version reveals the symphonic soul of Purcell’s modern classic in its most expansive telling yet.
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