So wrote the artist, Sidney Nolan, to Benjamin Britten on 8 August 1963. Enclosed with the letter was a 21-page libretto synopsis, beginning with a cast list and followed by an account of the act and scene divisions, a brief description of each scene, including stage directions, clarifications of mood and atmosphere at the dramatic and musical climaxes, and some dialogue. The tale outlined was the history of one Mrs Eliza Fraser – a history which exposed the cruelty and hypocrisy of allegedly civilized worlds, and which explored the passage from innocence to experience, the revelation of repressed instincts, notions of betrayal and injustice, of imprisonment and freedom, through symbols such as the ‘outsider’ and the power, both physical and psychological, of the sea.

Eliza Fraser was a wealthy Scottish lady who, returning from Australia with her husband, the sickly Captain James Fraser, was shipwrecked off the Queensland coast on 21 May 1836. The Frasers boarded a leaky longboat, and after an arduous journey – during which Mrs Fraser gave birth to a still-born child – eventually reached Sandy Island, now renamed Fraser Island. Upon landing, the survivors encountered native Aborigines; a scuffle ensued and James Fraser, demonstrating uncharacteristic bravery, was among those killed. His wife subsequently spent ten weeks living among these ‘savages’.