A note on taxonomy: the creatures described herein, whether flying or swimming past the vessel, or ensnared by Dr Gideon, have been known by multiple names through the years. I may have taken liberties: where possible, I have tried to identify them as they were known at the time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many books are worked into this tale, but the ones that lived on my desk were Patsy Adam Smith’s There Was a Ship; Graeme Broxham and Michael Nash’s Tasmanian Shipwrecks (where I first encountered the wrecks of the Britomart and the Sarah); Grease and Ochre by Patsy Cameron; Me Write Myself by Leonie Stevens; George Augustus Robinson’s Tasmanian journals, collected as Friendly Mission, ed. N. J. B. Plomley; One Hundred Islands: The Flora of the Outer Furneaux by Harris, Buchanan and Connolly; and Simon Barnard’s Vaux’s 1819 Dictionary of Convict Slang.

The epigraph couplet from Sailor’s Knot comes from Omar Sakr’s wonderful collection The Lost Arabs, and is used with his kind permission.

Anyone who writes an historical novel learns best from the people who have lived the story. And in this instance, I have been fortunate to meet a remarkable cast of teachers.

To the people of Flinders Island I owe an ongoing debt for their willingness to share stories and thoughts about my Furneaux Island projects. Among them, I wish to thank Bill Riddle, keeper of old tales, for his astonishing Britomart history, and Ronald Wise for wisdom and sausages, and for introducing me to the people of The Corner on Cape Barren Island: and those families, for their willingness to talk to me.

Maikutena Vicki-Laine Green and Patsy Cameron were patient and generous with their cultural insights and practical suggestions. Damien Newton Brown, Gerard Walker, Robert Gott, Jo Canham, Chris McDonald, Ed Prendergast and Nicole Maher all read the manuscript and improved it with their thoughts.

My thanks to Sophie McKinnon for Pauline Buckby’s The Legends of Hunter Island…and the skull; to Chris Kelly for pointing my various vessels in the right directions; to Michael Nash for his thoughts on the Sydney Cove wreck site; and to Clem Newton Brown and Professor John Pearn AO for sending me research.

As always, I reserve my deepest gratitude for my wife Lilly for her diligent reading of my early messes, and for her faith and love and calm counsel. Thanks also to my publisher, Michael Heyward, and all of the staff at Text Publishing for their skill and support, to Chong Weng Ho for the cover, Simon Barnard for the map and Jane Watkins for steering a steady course through strange times. And most especially to Mandy Brett, who endures the angst and hones the blade.

ALSO BY JOCK SERONG

ALSO BY JOCK SERONG

Quota

The Rules of Backyard Cricket

On the Java Ridge

Preservation