Thank you for reading Vertigo. This is a special book for me, not only because it draws on my thirty years of living with Meniere’s Disease, but because it represents a memorable time in my career. Like Frances, I was a public sector investigator and like Frances I delved into the depths of government department files and databases. Like Frances, I loved it. I would like to thank – with much warmth and affection – all of my colleagues at government integrity offices and the thousands of public servants who keep the wheels of the state turning. I would also like to thank the IRL public servants who gave me permission to use their names in this book. Special thanks to Frances, who is the inspiration for the main character and to Jack, for letting me use your name and recreate your enviable lifestyle.
As this book was being typeset, I learned of the passing of Dr Gordon Robertson PSM. Gordon served as the deputy auditor general in Western Australia for ten years. He was my cousin and, as we discovered after the fact, my boss. Gordon was awarded an Australian Centenary Medal for his service to the public of Western Australia and an Australian Public Service Medal for outstanding service to public sector auditing and strategic auditing policy. He was the polar opposite of Frances’ nemesis. I think she would have adored him as much as I did.
Thank you to the team at Fremantle Press. Fremantle Press’s core purpose is to identify talented new and emerging Western Australian writers and artists, and to publish and distribute our work to the widest possible audience. They have been with me at every turn of my fledging writing career and for that I am truly grateful.
Thank you to the booksellers, distributers, writers, writing centres, conference organisers, reviewers, bloggers, and all of the writing industry in Western Australia and Australia for your continued kindness and encouragement.
Thank you to every reader who has contacted me to tell me how much they enjoyed my books. You have no idea how much this means to me.
Thank you to Marlish Glorie’s writing group and my beta readers who claim to eagerly await each new manuscript, declare it a masterpiece, and set me straight on the things I get wrong.
A very special thank you to the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writing Centre for their Flash Fellowship which gave me a week of writing time in the Perth Hills.
And finally, thank you to my family and especially my husband, Ross, who still goes to work every day and comes home to a wife tapping away at her keyboard. Let’s go back to the Orange River.
I acknowledge that this book was written on Wadjak Noongar boodjar and that the town of Weymouth is created out of my memories growing up on Yamatji country.
I pay my respects to the elders, past and present, of all Indigenous people in Australia and affirm my support for their ongoing connection to country and culture.