The Secret of the Lonely Isles (15 page)

The Secret of the Lonely Isles
was largely written on board our yacht
Malaika
during a voyage from Darwin to Thailand.

Thank you to my husband Lex, for correcting my apprentice-sailor mistakes, and for checking the sailing descriptions and other maritime material. And for introducing me to life at sea.

Thanks to my son Shaun Ansell who checked my facts about the Djelk Rangers at Maningrida, with whom he has worked for the past three years.

Warmest appreciation once again to Linsay Knight and Sarah Hazelton at Random House Australia, to my editor Loretta Barnard and to my agent, the wonderful Selwa Anthony.

Have you read Brumby Plains and Castaway?

 

Sam and George McAllister live on a buffalo station in the Northern Territory, and this Christmas their cousins are coming to stay. This means weeks of fun – horse riding, camping out, fishing and exploring, driving themselves around the station in a four-wheel drive.

But what they haven't counted on is a strange meeting, an old mystery, and finding out more about their isolated home than they could ever have guessed.

People aren't always what they seem …

Brumby Plains is an isolated place, and the outside world doesn't intrude much there. But when brothers Sam and George McAllister discover a refugee child washed up on the shores of their buffalo station, the rest of the world is brought a lot closer. An accident has taken their parents, Mac and Sarah, far away, and Uncle Mungo has strong views about refugees. Sam discovers that it's a lot harder to stand up for what you believe in than to follow the crowd.

I first arrived in the Northern Territory in 1976 and lived out bush for the next twenty years on cattle and buffalo stations, where my two sons Callum and Shaun were raised. In 2008, my husband Lex and I sold our house and left Darwin with our sixteen-year-old daughter Ali, on our yacht
Malaika
, intending to sail around the world. We spent a magical eight months cruising Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, until we lost our beloved Ali in a fatal accident in a Phuket marina, where she was watching a super yacht berth. Now, in late 2010, Lex and I are heading out to sea again.

In memory of Alexandra Maria van Os

14.6.1992 – 18.2.2009