A Family Story Hidden in the Australian Outback

A Family Story Hidden in the Australian Outback

When I set out to research my novel Jack's Promises, based on the true story of a woman's endurance and survival in the harsh Australian bush during the Depression and the Second World War, I never imagined that I would uncover a branch of my own family that I didn't know existed.

Like many writers working with real events, I expected to find details that would enrich the story. What I didn't expect was to stumble across a family history that had remained hidden from me for more than sixty years.

On the evening of 29 December 1944, tragedy struck my family.

My grandfather took his own life in the kitchen of the family home near Coppermine Creek, on the outskirts of Cloncurry in north-west Queensland. He was only thirty-nine years old.

Present that night were my mother and her sister, Mavis. Both girls were fourteen years old, though Mavis was nine months younger. Their mother had gone into town for an evening out, while the two boys were at the pictures. The girls were left to look after their two younger siblings, who remained blissfully unaware of the terrible event unfolding around them.

"You be good girls."

Those were the last words my mother and Mavis heard before their father ended his life.

The impact was immediate and devastating. It was like an explosion that shattered the family, sending shockwaves through every life it touched. The damage could never be undone.

I grew up knowing about Mavis's own tragic death. I still remember the telegram that arrived at our house in Cairns in 1967, and how my mother broke down in tears when she received the news. Mum and Mavis had been inseparable, best friends as well as sisters. Losing her left a wound that never truly healed.

That same year, my grandmother published her memoir. Understandably, there was no mention of Mavis's death. Some grief is simply too fresh, too painful, or too difficult to put into words.

As I dug deeper into the research for Jack's Promises, I began piecing together fragments of family history that had been lost or forgotten. Then came an unexpected breakthrough.

A simple post on Facebook connected me with relatives I never knew existed.

Suddenly, a missing piece of the puzzle appeared.

Sixty-one years after Mavis's death, I discovered that I have family living in Julia Creek, a small outback town west of Cloncurry. People who share the same family story. People whose lives branched away from ours not long before I was born.

Researching a novel often takes writers down unexpected paths. Sometimes those paths lead to forgotten records, old photographs, or newspaper clippings. Occasionally, they lead somewhere far more personal.

For me, the journey behind Jack's Promises has become more than the story of one remarkable woman's survival in the Australian outback. It has become a journey into my own family's past—a past marked by tragedy, resilience, loss, and, unexpectedly, reconnection.

Some discoveries change a manuscript.

Others change the writer.