Hi everyone… The day is fast approaching for the cover artist to begin
working on my particular cover [starting 17th May]. For those of you who have already
signed in to be notified of all proceedings about the book via the Newsletter,
you will soon be rewarded by being the first to know of the launch date.
It’s an exciting time for someone of my
years to be starting over, as it were, as I’m sure you will all
appreciate. The possibility
of a story going worldwide is today a normal thing for so many people, but for
me it’s awe-inspiring and a little over-whelming. The computer age has been around for a while now, and I’m
slowly catching up with it, or some of it, but I am still amazed at what is
possible these days.
The second book, on which I am currently
working, is under way and progressing nicely. I am using some of my four years’ experience as a tour guide
in Old Government House at Parramatta to garnish the story a little. The location is well known to me, as is
the Dairy Cottage, originally known as Salter’s Cottage, and is an actual historical
building close by the House.
George Salter was convicted in March 1788
for his part in the death of two excise men who had caught him and three
accomplices smuggling. The other
three were hanged and George was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. But as a model prisoner he was
granted land by the river, and ran a ten acre farm of wheat, and almost twenty
acres of maize. Governor Lachlan
Macquarie converted the original one room cottage to a dairy, after George left
the area to go to Van Diemen’s Land [Tasmania] around 1815, and various
extensions were made after that.
‘My’ cottage is a little embellished, but the location is correct.
And in my mind’s eye I see the area about
which I write, knowing that it has changed remarkably in 200 years, yet staying
somewhat near the original state…
What a paradox of words that is!!
The domain around the House is similar to
all those years ago; the river course has barely moved – there is no longer a
tiny island near the House that the river used to pass along on both sides; the
same river my brother and I used to swim in, train in, when the swimming pool
was unavailable; the river where countless fishermen have pulled eels up onto
the banks and boiled up in old four gallon drums. Ugh! The same
river which today provides abundant quantities of very fat carp, caught by
Asian men who apparently treat them as a delicacy. This is all in the fresh water section before the water
tumbles over the weir to join the salt water, tidal water, coming in from Port
Jackson.
This is where I grew up, where my father
took us for walks along the river to places that are no longer accessible to
the public; where he taught us some of the history of Parramatta, as he knew
it, and won’t be found in any history book. This is MY place.
My hometown.
T.B.
