Obsessed with Henry Lawson’s short story The Drover’s Wife as a child, Leah Purcell has adapted it as a play, novel and film. Then composer George Palmer asked if she would collaborate on an opera. Jane Albert talks to Purcell, Palmer and soprano Nina Korbe about how the opera came about and what to expect.

Leah Purcell. Photo © Marnya Rothe

The town of Murgon in outback Queensland was not a big place when Leah Purcell was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. But life was hectic enough for Purcell, a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman, who helped her mum Florence raise her six siblings after her father left when Purcell was very young. There wasn’t much in the way of pop culture, but Purcell...