Set primarily on Drogheda—a fictional sheep station in the Australian Outback named after Drogheda, Ireland—the story focuses on the Cleary family and spans 1915 to 1969.
[2] The story begins in New Zealand on 8 December 1915, the fourth birthday of Meghann "Meggie" Cleary, who is the only daughter of Padraic ("Paddy"), an Irish farm labourer, and Fiona ("Fee"), his wife.
Meggie is a beautiful child with curly red-gold hair, but receives little coddling and must struggle to hold her own in the family, which includes five older brothers at the time.
Paddy has a wealthy sister, Mary Carson, a widow who lives in New South Wales, Australia, on Drogheda, an enormous sheep station.
One day, Paddy receives an offer from Mary of a job on her estate, so in 1921, the whole Cleary family moves from New Zealand to Australia.
Mary Carson, motivated by jealousy mingled with Machiavellian cruelty, devises a plan to separate Ralph from Meggie by tempting him with a high place in the church hierarchy.
Although her will of record leaves the bulk of her estate to Paddy, she quietly writes a new one, making the Roman Catholic Church the main beneficiary and Ralph the executor.
Drogheda is not the centre of her fortune as Ralph and Paddy have long believed, but is merely a hobby, a diversion from her true financial interests.
At Mary's 75th birthday party, Ralph goes to great lengths to avoid Meggie, now 17 and dressed in a beautiful rose-pink evening gown.
He sees at once the subtle genius of Mary's plan, and although he weeps and calls her "a disgusting old spider", he takes the new will to her lawyer without delay.
The bequest of 13 million pounds works its expected magic and Ralph soon leaves for Sydney to begin his rapid advance in the church.
More tragedy follows: Paddy dies in a lightning fire, and son Stu is killed by a wild boar shortly after finding his father's body.
After a brief honeymoon, Luke, a skinflint who regards women as sex objects and prefers the company of men, finds Meggie a live-in job with a kindly couple, the Muellers, and leaves to join a gang of itinerant sugarcane cutters in North Queensland.
He tells her he is saving money to buy a homestead; however, he quickly becomes obsessed with the competitive toil of cutting cane and has no real intention of giving it up.
There, at last, the lovers consummate their passion, and Ralph realises that despite his ambition to be the perfect priest, his desire for Meggie makes him a man like other men.
Justine grows into an independent, keenly intelligent girl who loves her brother dearly; however, she has little use for anyone else and calmly rebuffs Meggie's overtures of motherly affection.
Ralph visits Drogheda after a long absence, and meets Dane for the first time; although he finds himself strangely drawn to the boy, he fails to recognise that they are father and son.
Eventually, they renew their acquaintance on strictly platonic terms, until Rainer visits Drogheda alone to urge Meggie to help him pursue Justine's hand in marriage.
Justine, now the sole surviving grandchild of Fee and Paddy Cleary, finally accepts her true feelings for Rainer, and they marry.
[3] In the front matter of the book, the myth is set out: There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth.
[8] The Thorn Birds played a recurring role as a joke element in the TV show Late Night with Seth Meyers.
[9][10] Former NFL offensive tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson is named after The Thorn Birds character Father Ralph de Bricassart.