‘Well,’ said Gran. ‘About time you were back. There’s things you have to learn, girl.’ She laughed, but Nancy knew she was not joking when she said, ‘I had to keep myself alive long enough to teach them to you. You ready to learn your own place now?’
Michael’s arm was warm around her.
‘Yes,’ said Nancy of the Overflow.
Acknowledgements
At the finish of each book it is usually easy to decipher the web of gratitude to those who helped create it. This book was the most gruelling to create emotionally of any book I have written, and the acknowledgements equally difficult to untangle.
Firstly, to dear friend and colleague Emeritus Professor Virginia Hooker, more thanks than I can express for giving me so much of the skeleton of this book, from the name of the island where Nancy was imprisoned to the precious copy of Miss Carline Reid’s extraordinary book and eyewitness account of those last months before the British surrender in Malaya. All errors are mine, not hers, especially as a form of cowardice I am too wary to analyse prevents me from giving her the unpublished manuscript to read through.
To Lisa Berryman, who wept as she read the first draft, and whose response helped me to be able to face creating draft two, not for the time or intellectual effort, but because it was too soon to face the world I had recreated again: thank you, always, for making me the writer who writes this.
To Kate O’Donnell, who began her editor’s letter to me with ‘I may never forgive you for killing Gavin. There. It’s said. Narrative genius? Yes. Perfect climax? Sure, fine. BUT MY HEART IS BROKEN AND MAY NOT MEND. Just so you know.’: thank you for guiding me again through the novel, for your comments, your insight and your understanding.
So many thanks to Kate Burnitt for guiding the book so perfectly through the editorial process; to Angela Marshall, as always, for deciphering what was possibly the most garbled of all manuscripts I have given her, as well as — being Angela — also being familiar with all the places and histories in this book, and accompanying me and correcting me on the journey through them. And to Bryan too, who probably won’t read this, or the book itself, but who muttered sympathetically with only one eye on his New Scientist article when I cried as I explained plot devices, and how I wrote that final scene with Gavin only by writing it before I had even begun the book, or created the character who must die, the innocent who war kills, the child who shows that there can be joy even among suffering and squalor.
There are too many other thanks to fit here. To the family friends of my childhood, who had the courage to live well after all they had been through in World War II, to my parents Barrie Ffrench and Val French, whose stories are in this book, as are those of my grandparents Thelma Edwards and Dr T.A. Edwards, as well as the parents of friends, or those who kept their diaries and letters from that time, or wrote memoirs or collected oral histories afterwards, so we can hear the voices again. The Japanese voices show extraordinary courage and integrity in recording those years. There are many ways to love a country, and to serve it.
We owe much to every person on both sides of the conflict who had the strength to pass on their stories, despite their anguish, so that we can learn and understand.
About the Author
Jackie French is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator and the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2014–2015. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction. ‘Share a Story’ is the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term as Laureate.
You can visit Jackie’s website at:
www.jackiefrench.com
Other Books by Jackie French
Historical
Somewhere Around the Corner
Dancing with Ben Hall
Soldier on the Hill
Daughter of the Regiment
Hitler’s Daughter
Lady Dance
The White Ship
How the Finnegans Saved the Ship
Valley of Gold
Tom Appleby, Convict Boy
They Came on Viking Ships
Macbeth and Son
Pharaoh
A Rose for the Anzac Boys
Oracle
The Night They Stormed Eureka
Pennies for Hitler
Nanberry: Black Brother White
I am Juliet
Fiction
Rain Stones
Walking the Boundaries
The Secret Beach
Summerland
Beyond the Boundaries
Refuge
A Wombat Named Bosco
The Book of Unicorns
The Warrior — The Story of a Wombat
Tajore Arkle
Missing You, Love Sara
Dark Wind Blowing
Ride the Wild Wind: The Golden Pony and Other Stories
Non-Fiction
Let the Land Speak: How the Land Created Our Nation
Seasons of Content
A Year in the Valley
How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri
Invaded My Maths Class and Turned Me into a Writer
How to Guzzle Your Garden
The Book of Challenges
Stamp, Stomp, Whomp
The Fascinating History of Your Lunch
Big Burps, Bare Bums and Other Bad-Mannered Blunders
To the Moon and Back
Rocket Your Child into Reading
The Secret World of Wombats
I Spy a Great Reader
How High Can a Kangaroo Hop?
The Animal Stars Series
1. The Goat Who Sailed the World
2. The Dog Who Loved a Queen
3. The Camel Who Crossed Australia
4. The Donkey Who Carried the Wounded
5. The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger
6. Dingo: The Dog Who Conquered a Continent
The Matilda Saga
1. A Waltz for Matilda
2. The Girl from Snowy River
3. The Road to Gundagai
In the Blood
Blood Moon
Flesh and Blood
School for Heroes Series
Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior
Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
Wacky Families Series
1. My Dog the Dinosaur
2. My Mum the Pirate
3. My Dad the Dragon
4. My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome
5. My Uncle Wal the Werewolf
6. My Gran the Gorilla
7. My Auntie Chook the Vampire Chicken
8. My Pa the Polar Bear
Phredde Series
1. A Phaery Named Phredde
2. Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce
3. Phredde and the Zombie Librarian
4. Phredde and the Temple of Gloom
5. Phredde and the Leopard-Skin Librarian
6. Phredde and the Purple Pyramid
7. Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team
8. Phredde and the Ghostly Underpants
Picture Books
Diary of a Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
Pete the Sheep (with Bruce Whatley)
Josephine Wants to Dance (with Bruce Whatley)
The Shaggy Gully Times (with Bruce Whatley)
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip (with Bruce Whatley)
Baby Wombat’s Week (with Bruce Whatley)
Queen Victoria’s Underpants (with Bruce Whatley)
The Tomorrow Book (with Sue deGennaro)
Christmas Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
A Day to Remember (with Mark Wilson)
Queen Victoria’s Christmas (with Bruce Whatley)
Dinosaurs Love Cheese (with Nina Rycroft)
The Hairy-Nosed Wombats Find a New Home (with Sue deGennaro)
Good Dog Hank (with Nina Rycroft)
The Beach They Called Gallipoli (with Bruce Whatley)
Copyright
The title of this book and the text on the cover ‘All you who have not loved her, You will not understand …’ come from the poem ‘My Country’ by Dorothea Mackellar. Reproduced by arrangement with the Licensor, The Dorothea Mackellar Estate, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd.
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2014
This edition published in 2014
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jackie French and E French 2014
The right of Jackie French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
French, Jackie, author.
To love a sunburnt country / Jackie French.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9723 7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978 1 7430 9984 1 (epub)
For ages 14+
Australian fiction.
Australia—Social conditions—Juvenile fiction.
A823.3
Cover design by Matt Stanton, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images: Girl © Peter Glass / Arcangel Images; all other images by shutterstock.com
Author photograph by Kelly Sturgiss