In 1842, the Crown Commissioner for Lands, Stephen Simpson, along with a Lutheran priest, Christoph Eipper, set out from Moreton Bay with the intention of finding a site for a new Aboriginal settlement in the Larger Bunya Country, now Kenilworth. They were accompanied on their journey by twelve soldiers, a team of bullocks and a dray, as well as two escaped convicts, Bracewell and Davis, both of whom had lived for an extended period amongst the natives. Almost 150 years later, Steven Lang followed their route from the source of the Mary River to where it joins the sea. In A Strong Brown God, Lang marries his story with that of the earlier men, both Aboriginal and white, weaving a picture of the Mary Valley as it was then and as it is now - a very personal portrait that becomes a paean for the river and its importance.