Quite often when I’m writing I’ll recall a story my father told me, or dig through our archives and find a forgotten document. This happened when I began crafting The Last Station. Rummaging through the past can yield fascinating information and it was while doing just that a few years ago that I recalled an [...]
‘Alfred clacked his dentures in irritation. He was fond of the teeth left him by his father. ‘Waterloo teeth’ he called them, a grisly reminder of their battlefield provenance.’ The Last Station In the seventeen and eighteen hundred’s people were dabbling in dentistry. The wealthy were eating more sugar and teeth-whitening treatments were highly acidic [...]
Great news during tough times with The Cedar Tree hitting the no. 4 spot on the Australian fiction list. My latest novel joins last year's Stone Country in the Top Ten ranks. A big thankyou to everyone supporting Australian writers in this new world we're living in.
Pro Hart. Surely everyone has heard of this iconic artist in Australia. If not, then here's a brief snapshot of the man who grew to become synonymous with the outback. Pro was a Broken Hill boy. He grew up at his parent's property, Larloona Station, which was located about one hundred and thirty kilometres east [...]
He was the son of a Welsh convict and a mother driven from Ireland by the potato famine, but the man who would change his name from Arthur Hoey Davis to Steele Rudd, began life as one of thirteen children at Drayton, near Toowoomba,Queensland. Whether he was interested or not in a formal education, the need [...]
Sunrise and sunset. These are my favourite times of the day, when the sun is near the horizon straddling the rim of the earth, as it either embarks on bringing us a new day or dwindles towards nightfall. The best photos are taken at this time when sunlight travels through a greater depth of atmosphere, [...]
Bathurst, NSW: Construct a one-hundred-mile road in six months, proclaim a township, disrupt the indigenous population, discover gold and begin taming the land; such was the beginning of Australia’s oldest inland settlement. Building a path across the Blue Mountains presented a mighty challenge however in 1814, Governor Macquarie approved an offer by William Cox to build a road [...]
F. Scott Fitzgerald the author of The Great Gatsby coined the phrase the ‘Jazz Age’ and was known as the Great American Dreamer. If you haven't read the novel you may well have seen the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. The Great Gatsby is the story of a mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his unrealistic obsession [...]
For a bushranger to be hanged but also dissected for scientific purposes in order to explore the possibility of abnormalities, you’d imagine some strange behavioural type or perhaps the very worst of crimes. Although the facts remain a little hazy, the truth gone with Alexander Pearce to his grave, there is little doubt that the [...]
I'm heading to Forbes on Thursday the 21st & Friday 22nd June 2018 for the Forbes Shire Council / Business Chambers 'Girl's Day Out' event. There's lots on: a cocktail party on the Thursday night and a luncheon at the Golf Club on Friday, plus a Friday morning shopping frenzy. If you're in the area grab some [...]
