This story was written some time ago, just before the pandemic, and thankfully this year, it has been refined by editors Lauren Finger (and her exhaustive wrangling of the timeline into shape), and Laurie Ormond, and the ever supportive team at HQ, HarperCollins Australia. While all of my books have a relationship between the lead characters, I wanted this one to have even more of a focus. I hope I’ve hit the mark with Evie and Raff.
My humble thanks to all my readers who are first and foremost in my mind. Thank goodness for each of you—I get to live my dream.
Big thanks again to Susan Parslow, my beta reader, and to all friends and family who encourage and support me while I happily (mostly) skip along living my dream. There are as many ups as downs.
Thanks to Tee Fraser for her History of Colour knowledge, of tones and shades of colour. The production of colour dyes is a fascinating science, closely connected to fashion and its history.
Thanks to booksellers everywhere! To the Kangaroo Island community for all its support over the years, and early on, to Alison Hewitt in Cobram for a little insight.
Good journalists in the day were well respected, and much the same as it is today, the great ones were targeted for saying too much, speaking out against the wrongs of the day, against the political powers and the corruption that is often associated with tyrants of any level. A few scribes would have roamed the countryside following stories and writing them where they were found. The marvellous National Library of Australia’s Trove has digitised countless of their articles from newspapers, and a Google search brings up their biographies.
As always, I am indebted to Trove, and to the wonderful resources that abound around the country in libraries and with historians. Without them, our history, even some tiny snippets of day-to-day living, would not be preserved.