Trivia / Lands of Red and Gold

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: When designing the religion of the Atjuntja Jared was mostly thinking of Chinese Mythology and Zoroastrianism for the dualistic aspect of this religion. As it turns out, most native Australian societies do have a light goddess and a dark god, albeit representing literally the sun and moon rather than moral concepts (some, like Bila, are pretty bad).
• Life Imitates Art: The fictional plague Marnitja ("the Waiting Death") was based on the real-world Hendra virus, a disease which infects humans via horses. The author described the fictional-analogue disease Marnitja as infecting humans via dogs, since alt-Australia lacked horses. At the time, the real Hendra was only known to infect horses. Scarily, a couple of years after this was described in the timeline, Hendra was also discovered to infect dogs.