I am indebted to John Vanderleest of the Australian Cave Diving Association for his invaluable technical advice and generous feedback. Any errors and omissions are mine. Thanks also to big wave surfer, Damon Eastaugh, for his insights on the Cow Bombie. I would also like to thank Simon Mann, Tor Larsen, Geoff Martin, Michael Potts and Tom Davies for their unstinting belief and support on the journey, and of course my family, in particular my wife, Cathy, my father, Ian, and my sister-in-law, Pip Austin.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation for the opportunity it afforded me, David Llewellyn for his incisive manuscript development, my editor, Claire Johnson-Creek for her perceptive insights, my agent, Charlotte Colwill, for her care and guidance, and last but not least, the people of the island of New Guinea, who I hope will forgive any liberties taken in my imaginings.

About the author

About the Author

Jake Avila is a full-time writer with a BA in Writing and Information Technology. He has a background in freelance journalism writing on politics, culture, technology, and sport, and taught secondary English for ten years. In 2019, he won the Adventure Writer’s Competition Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award for Cave Diver and then went on to win the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for the same book in 2020.

The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize supports and celebrates the best aspiring and established adventure writers today. Writers are recognised in three distinct categories with awards for published, unpublished and young writers.

Cave Diver by Jake Avila won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, Best Unpublished Manuscript award in 2020.

Launched in 2016, the Prize is administered by The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to empowering writers, promoting literacy and advancing adventure writing.