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Read an extract of Chris Hammer's Silver before it hits screens

  • Writer: Allen & Unwin
    Allen & Unwin
  • Mar 28
  • 9 min read

Your first look at Season 2 of Scrublands, based on Chris Hammer's bestselling novel Silver.


Martin Scarsden is back in the all new season of Scrublands - premiering 17 April with every episode dropping at once, exclusively on Stan.


Wondering what's to come for Martin and Mandy? Then read on for an exclusive extract from Silver by Chris Hammer.

 

For half a lifetime, journalist Martin Scarsden has run from his past. But now there is no escaping.


He'd vowed never to return to his hometown, Port Silver, and its traumatic memories. But now his new partner, Mandy Blonde, has inherited an old house in the seaside town and Martin knows their chance of a new life together won't come again.


Martin arrives to find his best friend from school days has been brutally murdered, and Mandy is the chief suspect. With the police curiously reluctant to pursue other suspects, Martin goes searching for the killer. And finds the past waiting for him.



Here's your sneak peek at Silver:


The sun slides and glances, flaring in his eyes. He can't see the ball and swings blind, hoping: hoping to connect, hoping he doesn’t get out, hoping he doesn’t get struck. Hoping he escapes embarrassment, just this once. So he swings, eyes closed, useless to him,

as if in prayer. And somehow, by some divine whim, the bat does strike the ball.

Through the wooden handle, through its perished rubber grip and unravelling string, he feels the power of the stroke, the ball collected by the very heart of the bat. He feels the spongy tennis ball flattening, compressing, then expanding, sent on its accelerating arc, launched away, as if dictated by heaven. And he feels in that moment of impact, in that instant, perfection. He opens his eyes, releasing the handle and shielding his eyes in time to see the ball, wonder at it, as it goes soaring over the wooden palings, over into the neighbour’s yard. A six. Six and out. Dismissed, but in glory, not in shame. No dull thud of ball into garbage bin, no raucous leg before appeal, no taunting laughter greeting a skied catch.


A six. Over the fence. A hero’s death.


‘Fuck me, Martin. What a shot,’ says Uncle Vern.


‘Language, Vern,’ says his mother.


‘You hit it, you get it,’ says the bowler, the boy from down the street.


But Martin says nothing, does nothing, doesn’t move, caught in the moment. The moment he connected. That perfect moment, caught in time.


And then.


The phone rings. ‘Mumma, mumma,’ calls Enid, or Amber, one or other of the twins, the inseparable, indistinguishable twins. And his mother goes, before she can compliment him on his shot, gift him the praise he deserves. To the phone, to the call that bisects the world, that draws the clearest of lines between before and after. Thirty-three years later Martin Scarsden drives, driving into memory, driving down towards Port Silver. Part of him is concentrating, intent on the road, navigating the hairpins as he guides the car down the escarpment; part of him is lost in the past, lost in that perfect day, the day when fate flared so brightly and so briefly, the same day it dropped a curtain upon them, like the end of a play. This day the sun is filtered, flickering through the rainforest canopy, strobing.


Squinting, he cannot see the ocean, but senses it, knows that should he pull over, if there were space on this narrowest of roads to stop the car, he would be able to see it: the Pacific.

It’s there, beyond the trees, the great blue expanse.


‘Can you see the sea?’ his father asks him through the years, justas he asked it each and every time they descended through these hairpin corners.


‘See the sea, get home free,’ he’d say with a laugh.


Martin never could see it, though; never. But a time had come when he hadn’t needed to, he had come to know it was there, beyond the bottom of the escarpment, beyond the dairy farms, the cane fields and the river flats, past the fishing harbour and the holiday shacks and the long white sands. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it.


And so it is on this early autumn day, as he winds the car down through the spotted gums and the cabbage tree ferns, the palm trees and the staghorns and the cedars trailing vines, bellbirds chiming. He can feel it in the air, moist and cool becoming moist and warm as he descends, ears popping, towards the ocean, the tugging dryness of a drought-ravaged inland left the far side of the coastal range. And in the distance, still unseen but already

imposing itself: Port Silver.


The land of his youth, revisited.


‘Vern! Vern!’ she cries, voice infused with some unknown emotion. ‘Martin! Girls!’


He’s climbing back over the fence, grey wood splintered and dry to the touch, ball in hand, his glorious dog-chewed trophy, when his mother bursts out through the screen door, laughing and crying at the same time, emotions sweeping her along like an incoming tide.


‘We done it. Jesus Christ. We won the bastard!’


Martin looks to his uncle, but sees Vern’s own incomprehension at his sister’s unprecedented swearing.


‘Hilary?’ prompts Vern.


‘The lottery, Vern. The fucking lottery! Division one!’


Martin leaps from the fence into a yard unfamiliar, ball forgotten, bat abandoned. The lottery. They’ve won the lottery. The fucking lottery. Vern hugs one or other of Martin’s sisters, she hugs him back, happy and uncomprehending, then they are dancing, all five of them: his mother, the twins, himself and Uncle Vern, dancing on the Victor-mowed wicket as the boy from down the road returns scampering back down the road, wide-eyed and

open-mouthed, carrying the news before him like a southerly: the Scarsdens have won division one. The fucking lottery.


The escarpment joins the plain, the rainforest ends and the dairy farms begin; port silver 30 kilometres states the sign. Martin Scarsden returns wholly to the present. Port Silver, its ghosts sheltering from the iridescent sun, but awaiting him nevertheless.


Port Silver. For pity’s sake, why had Mandy chosen this town of all towns, his home town, to restart their lives? He crosses the old bridge over Battlefield Creek, the stream flowing along the base of the range, the boundary between the natural world of the escarpment

and the imposed geometry of the dairy farms and cane fields.


He’s about to shift into a higher gear in preparation for the faster roads of the flatlands when he sees her: the hitchhiker. Her legs flash in the subtropical sun beneath denim cut-offs. There’s a tank top, a bare midriff, her thumb casually extended. A foreigner then, if she’s using her thumb. Her hair is out, and so is her smile, broadening as he pulls onto the shoulder: a gravel clearing at the juncture between the hills and the plain, near

the turn-off to the sugar mill. Even before he stops, he sees her companion, his hair dark and long, sitting with their packs, back from the road, out of the sun, out of sight of approaching motorists.


Martin smiles; he understands the deception, takes no offence.


‘Port Silver?’ asks the young woman.


‘Sure.’ It’s not as if the road goes anywhere else.


Martin uses his key to open the boot, the internal release of his old Toyota Corolla long broken. The man hefts the backpacks effortlessly, drops them into the cavity, closes the lid. Martin can see his arms, tattoos on sculpted flesh, the musculature of youth,

wrapped in the smell of tobacco and insouciance. The young woman climbs in beside Martin; the man gets into the back seat, shoving Martin’s meagre possessions to one side. She smells nice, some sort of herbal perfume. Her companion removes his sunglasses

and offers a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, man. Good of you.’ He reaches over the seat, gives Martin a powerful handshake. ‘Royce. Royce McAlister.’


‘Topaz,’ says the girl, replacing her companion’s hand with her own. ‘And you are?’ She leaves her hand in his for a flirtatious moment.


‘Martin,’ he replies, grinning.


He starts the car, guides it back onto the road, childhood memories banished.


‘You live in Port Silver?’ asks Topaz.


‘No. Not for a long time.’


‘We’re after work.’ Her accent is American. ‘Heard there’s plenty up here this time of year.’


‘Maybe,’ says Martin. ‘Holiday peak is over, kids back at school, but you might get lucky.’


‘What about fruit picking?’ It’s Royce, leaning forward, his accent unmistakably Australian, broad and unpretentious. ‘Greenhouses?’


‘For sure,’ says Martin. ‘But it’s harder work than waiting at a cafe or catering for tourists.’


‘I need it for my visa,’ says Topaz. ‘I work for three months outside the cities, I get another year in Oz. We took the overnight train up to Longton. Word in Sydney is there’s plenty of work up this way.’


‘Possibly. I wouldn’t know,’ says Martin. Back when he was a child the greenhouses up the river were full of migrants, itinerant labourers gaining their first foothold in their new country. Nowadays foreign backpackers are supposedly the workforce of choice.


Topaz talks on, her enthusiasm infectious, recounting some of their adventures: how she met Royce in Goa, how he followed her to Bali, then Lombok, how they fell for each other and came to Australia together. Royce is chiming in, interjecting with observant quips and laughter. It’s like a performance, a two-hander, with Martin the audience; he’s grateful for the distraction. Royce has put his sunglasses back on. They sit askew, one arm missing,

but he shows no sign of being bothered by the deformity, as if all sunglasses should be made this way. ‘We just go with the flow, man,’ he says, summarising the moral of their story.


It’s all Martin can do to keep his eyes on the road as he steals glances at the pair of them, Royce in the back seat with his square jaw, open smile and defiant sunnies, Topaz next to him in the front, seatbelt carving a valley between her breasts. She seems aware of his attention, appears to welcome it. And soon Martin is talking as well, the car propelled towards Port Silver on a road canefield straight, advising them on the best beaches and surf breaks, fishing spots and swimming holes. Then Port Silver is upon them: a new high school, a car lot, a budget motel, a clump of fast-food franchises.


Squat palm trees line the road. Changed yet familiar after twenty-three years.


The hitchhikers say he can drop them anywhere, but he insists on taking them to a place they’ve heard of near Town Beach, a backpacker hostel. Sure enough, there it is, a two-storey

weatherboard, painted an eye-catching blue. sperm cove backpackers says the sign, adorned with a smiling whale, one eye winking, one flipper forming a thumbs-up. He parks next to it, overlooking the beach, and helps Royce retrieve their packs. He’s almost sorry to leave them.


Alone in the car once again, he doesn’t start the engine straight away. He can feel the warm breeze on his face, the touch of it unchanged in two decades, warm and moist and gentle, so different from the parched gusts of the interior, or the gritty second-hand air of Sydney. Below him, on the beach, more backpackers loll in the sun, chatting in groups or playing soccer. He feels a pang of envy: he’d never gone with the flow, lived for the day, romanced a pretty girl in the islands of Indonesia. There had been no gap year, no floating through Asia, no great Australian road trip.


Adolescence was something to be endured; why extend it? It was straight to uni and, before he had even finished his degree, straight into the newspaper. His travelling had been different: sweating over laptops in war zones instead of smoking reefers in Bali; interviewing

self-important men in suits instead of serving eccentric locals in an English pub; sleeping with affection-starved strangers instead of falling in love. Maybe now it will be different, living here with Mandalay and her son Liam; now he has this chance to start life over. Not going with the flow, but his big chance, an opportunity to catch up with life and embrace it before it heads over the horizon and leaves him stranded for good. He decides the hitchhikers have done him a favour. He turns from the beach, starts the engine. Port Silver isn’t about the past, he tells himself, it’s about the future. About making a future, shaping it.


And the future looks bright and welcoming. Mandy is here, waiting for him, the single mum he met and fell for out on the edge of nowhere.


Surely that has its own romance, as good as Goa or Lombok.


He feels a surge of optimism and longing; for a fleeting moment, as he puts the car into gear, the world seems to be spinning back towards equilibrium.


He can’t wait to see her, to begin this new life.



An edited extract of Silver by Chris Hammer - available now in all good bookstores, in ebook and audio.



 

Silver by Chris Hammer

Silver

by Chris Hammer


For half a lifetime, journalist Martin Scarsden has run from his past. But now there is no escaping. Read the stunning sequel to Scrublands before you stream it on Stan this April.









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