Australia Day

Australia Day 2013 should have been full of barbecues, picnics, thong-throwing competitions, and happy families celebrating their pride in their country while newer residents proudly took their citizenship oath. But Cyclone Oswald lashed Queensland’s coast, creating six tornadoes and the biggest flood in Bundaberg’s recorded history. Thousands of homes were inundated, thirteen washed away, never to be found, others teetering on holes created by the torrent. Businesses suffered devastating losses, caught by Nature’s intensity and the Burnett River breaking its banks. Boats were washed away, some completely disappearing, some found days later as broken hulks on the rocky shore, debris scattered like broken dreams.

The town was in shock. But as the water receded and help flowed in, Bundabergians created their own Mud Army and went to work helping those whose lives had been traumatised.

One year later, the town has mostly recovered. Some businesses never re-opened, some houses never re-built, some folks still fighting insurance companies and unable to return to their homes, but the ghost-town atmosphere that pervaded North Bundaberg in the months following the flood has been replaced by a thriving community spirit.

So this Australia Day I reflected on that wonderful Aussie spirit, that pride in a country of extremes, from tropical rainforests, snow-covered mountain ranges, vast Outback plains that seem to be either in drought or flood. We started as a penal colony of convicts and guards and evolved into explorers and farmers and graziers and nation-builders. But it wasn’t easy. This is a harsh and often unforgiving land, and it took guts to try to conquer it.

It’s those aspects of the Australian landscape and psyche that I’ve tried to capture in my books. I love this unique land of ours and want to share it with my readers. In Dance with the Devil the rugged Great Dividing Range became as huge an obstacle for Emma and Drew to conquer as the killer who held an innocent life in his hands. In Black Ice a hit-and-run on the Sunshine Coast and a mud slide in the Blue Mountains nearly meant the end for Kirri and Daniel. Deadly Tide was a favourite to write, set as it was on a trawler off Bundaberg’s coast. Putting Sam and Chayse in such a confined space gave lots of opportunities for sparks to fly, and some unusual dangerous situations, and researching beautiful Lady Musgrave Island was no hardship for this dedicated writer J

Until Death was more citified, encompassing Brisbane, Sydney and the Hunter Valley region where Libby and Connor had to cope with a natural disaster as deadly as the killers hunting them.

Dangerous Deception allowed me to indulge in more exotic locations such as Central Queensland’s Carnarvon Gorge before bringing Breeanna and Rogan back to Melbourne. But I couldn’t resist having them go via the Gold Coast hinterland in a daring escape that has them jumping off a mountain.

Ladder to Amphitheatre tunnel entrance at Carnarvon Gorge

The plot of Fatal Flaw only allowed me to take a slight deviation from Brisbane’s suburbs, Chinatown, and nearby Mount Glorious, but it’s Mark’s trip to the sapphire diggings outside Emerald that gives him a clue to who wants to kill Julie’s father.

Grievous Harm (to be released later this year), traverses a lot of New South Wales and Queensland, and depicts the harshness and grandeur of the Outback. This is the darkest of all my novels, and I hope readers can forgive me for what I put Kate and John through. They really deserve their HEA.

What I also strived to do was give my heroes and heroines the kind of courage our early settlers had to have in order to survive. They have to battle not only the highs and lows of falling in love, but danger in various guises and a land that can be as deadly as any determined killer.

We didn’t have prawns (shrimp) on the barbie this Australia Day, but lamb chops (after all, Australia was supposed to ride on the sheep’s back at one stage in our history), and I counted my blessings that I live in this wonderful country that gives me such fabulous settings in which to tell my stories, and planned my next research trips to those states and territories I haven’t yet written about.

Congratulations to a friend

It was one day after Valentine’s Day, but my friend Louise Cusack‘s life was full of rose-tinged thoughts when her fantasy romance trilogy was epublished by Momentum Books on 15 February. Although the books had been previously print published in Australia, epublishing meant they were now available internationally.

Epublishing is a wonderful avenue for Australian authors to get their books out into the world. My books have Australian settings, which can make them difficult to sell overseas, and particularly into the USA, but with the growing trend towards readers purchasing ebooks it means my stories can now reach a greater audience and show readers from other countries aspects of Australia, and particularly Queensland, they won’t find in most travel brochures. For example, the amazing Amphitheatre at Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland is a wonderful example of nature’s force and I knew I had to use it when writing Dangerous Deception. The opening to the Amphitheatre is high up on a cliff face and can only be reached by climbing a series of ladders.

 

When you get to the entrance of the tunnel (which is formed by an enormous slab of rock splitting apart and creating an opening), you then have to traverse about 40 metres of uneven rock as well as concrete steps made by the Park Rangers. This photo was taken from almost inside the Amphitheatre looking back to the entrance in the cliff face.

When you step inside the Amphitheatre, it’s like walking into a massive cathedral. You gaze up the vaulting slabs of rock to the tiny opening at the top where sunlight enters. The floor is grey dirt, and amazingly ferns grow in abundance, perhaps watered by rain seeping through fissures in the rock. They certainly wouldn’t get much rain through the small top opening.

When we were there a young couple joined us, and the woman took out a flute and began playing. Magic. It was the only word to describe it. Pure notes lingering then rising to the tiny patch of sky above. The acoustics are so good they have had choirs perform there for the fabulous resonance.

There’s something spiritual about Carnarvon Gorge, and even more so about the Amphitheatre. It was something I felt just driving from the highway to the Gorge and became stronger the moment I walked into the Amphitheatre.

Aboriginal rock paintings adorn the cliff walls further into the gorge, and it’s easy to visualise them living here and enjoying the abundant wildlife. With a creek traversing the length of the gorge, there is ample water and lush grasses to attract wallabies, goannas and birds.

Unfortunately, feral pigs have also made the gorge their home, and their habit of rooting up plants for food has led to some destruction of the creek banks. The Park Rangers try to keep their numbers under control, but eliminating them entirely would be almost impossible.