Under The Rug

Award Winner in Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Awards

While walking past her deceased parents' former home in Rye, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, Elizabeth Peterson, (nee Chambers), has a chance encounter that leads to the discovery of members of a previously unknown branch of the Chambers family, also living in Rye. Deciding to meet to compare family photographs, the assembled relatives form the impression that something must have happened some time ago to divide the family. Elizabeth and her new-found second cousin Peter Chambers agree to take a trip up to Kyneton in inland Victoria to see if they can shed any light on the family break-up.


Meetings and information gained in Kyneton help them uncover dark incidents that had for long been swept under the rug in the secretive way earlier generations concealed unpalatable truths. Further family research leads to the uniting of the present-day dispersed branches of the Chambers family, and through a chance discovery, as unlikely as the first, the mystery behind the family's lurid past is revealed.