RESEARCHING JACK'S PROMISES

Researching Jack’s Promises took me deep into the family history and real-life events that inspired my novel, revealing the people, places and experiences behind the story.

Since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by the stories my mother told me about her life in western Queensland. But there was much more to her story than met the eye. Unless you 've lived in poverty in the Australian bush, or on the outskirts of a bush town in a rundown house with no floorboards except in the main bedroom, it’s difficult to understand the hardships life could throw at you.

In Jack’s Promises, the characters’ names have been changed, with two exceptions: Jack and Rosie. Rosie was my mother, and Jack Gill was her foster father. Her mother was Doris. The Gills had six children of their own and adopted my mother in 1936, when she was six years old.

In the 1990s, my mother came across a memoir Doris had written while working as a cook at Taldora Station. With little to occupy her outside working hours, Doris had put her memories on paper for her family. Somehow, the memoir was eventually published in the United States, but my mother was the only one who never received a copy.

Although roughly written, my grandmother’s memoir is gripping from beginning to end. It provided me with material for two novels, the second of which I’m currently working on. Both are works of fiction based on real events. Combined with the stories my mother told me and the notes she made, Doris’s memoir became an invaluable source for my research.

But something was missing. I needed to visit all the places where the Gills had lived. More than that, I needed to experience the bush for myself.

In 2017, I flew from Paris to Brisbane, then on to Townsville, where I caught a coach to Mount Isa. There, I hired a four-wheel-drive vehicle and set off for Cloncurry, carrying supplies, notebooks, pencils, a camera, a small suitcase and a tent.

That was all I needed. No mobile phone. No contact with the outside world.

Compared with what the Gills endured in the 1930s, my adventure was nothing.

The beauty of the bush, combined with its dangers, is something I’ll never forget. Sleeping in my tent in out-of-the-way places, listening to dingoes howl in the darkness and wondering whether snakes were lurking just outside, gave me a glimpse of the world the Gill family had inhabited day after day, night after night.

I thought about the hardships of finding water, living off the land and enduring storms and dust. Doris educated the children herself and nursed them whenever they fell ill. Jack worked in abandoned copper mines and killed kangaroos for their meat and skins.

In her memoir, Doris wrote about the crushing isolation that drove her to the brink of madness on more than one occasion.

I thought about the family as I scratched lines in the red earth, waiting for my billy to boil. The sun was sinking, and the sky began to change. The intense blue of the outback gave way to purple, red and orange. Hundreds of parrots, their white feathers flashing in the fading light, flew noisily towards their roosts. Then, almost suddenly, everything fell quiet. The sky turned grey, then black.

There is something mysterious about living in the bush, something that draws you back. Despite its hardships and dangers, it gets under your skin, gripping you as though it never wants to let you go.

And I did go back. Two years later, I returned to finish my research, revisit places I’d already seen and explore others I’d missed the first time around.

Maybe on purpose.