The 2 basic plots in literature and the novel Eucalyptus

At suggestion of friend DC who has steered me to many excellent though little-known books have started reading Murray Bail's 1998 novel, Eucalyptus; he's an Australian writer who, unlike some of his contemporaries, has never found a foothold among American readers (Eucalyptus won the Commonwealth Prize, acc. to DC, but Bail has never won a Booker, which seems to be the ticket to an international readership.) Too early - only about 15% - into the the novel for any judgment yet, but was amused by some of Bail's narrative antics. It's been said that there are two plots that prevail over almost all of literature: Someone takes a journey and A stranger comes to town. This novel, set in the "bush" some distance west of Sydney, is definitely the latter - and, with it's early 19th-century setting, struck me at first as very much like an American western transposed: The stranger, named Holland, buys up a vast tract of land, unseen, and arrives in the small town, the object of great interest, especially from unmarried women (he is alone), but remains aloof - and then a young girl arrives, seemingly his daughter, though Bail notes a few ambiguities in Holland's back story (which his new townsfolk do not know): It seems her mother was pregnant by another man when Holland married her; it seems the mother died shortly after childbirth (and a twin brother died in the childbirth), but Bail's account of these events is so vague that we suspect some other strangers will arrive in town somewhere down the line. Bail has a wry sense of humor and notes even in the telling that this plot set-up is practically a literary cliche. He also has a great interest in botany (see the title) and spends (too much) time describing the various species of eucalypts, noting that it used to be a symbol of Australia but now has been exported and taken root around the world; so far, so what? (I tried to read The Overstory, about the lives of trees, and didn't like that, either.)