The year is 1866, and an English governess consigned to doleful duty in a remote Australian backwater has her thoughts interrupted by a preposterous vision: "She was running through her list of unsatisfactory or irritating or boorish suitors when she saw a church made from glass towed into her field of vision by two men in wide straw hats." This is no hallucination. The crystalline minicathedral that floats into view, with a framework of iron, measures 50 ft. in length and 22 ft. 6 in. across. It weighs twelve tons.
By the time the governess beholds the church, Australian Author Peter...