My agent and friend, Selwa Anthony, has given me unswerving support and straight-talking since before Ironbark was born; as has Bastian Schlück, my valued champion in Germany; to Linda Anthony my thanks for her help above and beyond the call of duty.
I want to thank my publishers Simon and Schuster (Aust.) and especially the sensitive insight and advice of Managing Editor Roberta Ivers and copy editor Janet Hutchinson. My Western Australian historian friend Anne Robinson has been the first person to read all my manuscripts prior to publication – her formidable historical knowledge is equalled by her insight into characters. I thank Jan Wood for taking time from the production of her TV series to read Golden Hope and give me valuable suggestions about women’s issues in the Federation era.
I was blessed to inherit my father Fred Parsons’s younger ‘band of brothers’: a true legend in radio and TV, Philip Brady; comedy-writer and author Mike McColl Jones; and author and Ned Kelly historian Ian Jones. Thank you more than I can say.
My loyal network of friends and extended family understand why for months I kept disappearing under a ‘research cloud’, with one foot planted in the nineteenth century, the other in the twenty-first. You all cheered me on to the finish line to deliver Golden Hope.
Here and now I must record my special thanks to Dr Stephen Shumach, Professor Peter Bye and Dr Jane Novotny, for their continuous support over four books during which they were peppered with my medical queries.
Special thanks to special people for their long-term interest: Emeritus Professor John Ramsland and Dr Marie Ramsland; Emeritus Professor Suzanne Rutland; Roger Selby, Honorary Secretary of NAJEX; Philip Moses of AJHS; The Independent Scholars Association of Australia; Bill Owen of Wydidya, North Star, New South Wales, for suggesting Slim Dusty’s evocative song, The Pearl of Them All, when I was writing about Rom’s horse; Kiwi friend Lyn White for my New Zealand queries; Edna Wilson who found out-of-print books; and Tim Moroney, ever alert for historical reference books.
I was offered rare insight into South Africa by a group of highly creative South African-born Australian women whose ancestors fought on both sides of the conflict; Sibyl Smuskowitz’s husband Chaim entrusted me with his books, including To the Bitter End, a remarkable photographic history of the Boer War by Emanoel Lee that gave me a visual passport into the Boers’ perspective of the war.
I trust my own ancestors will accept the fact I have borrowed some of their names for my fictional characters to avoid accidental overlap with real people.
Above all I thank you, my readers, for the loveliest phrase any author can hear: ‘I love your books – I can’t wait for the next one!’
About the author
Johanna Nicholls comes from a theatrical family. She was a journalist and magazine feature writer in Sydney, Melbourne and London. In television she worked as a researcher/writer and Head Script Editor of TV Drama at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Born in Melbourne, Johanna has lived in England, Italy and Greece, and her home is an 1830s convict-built sandstone cottage in Birchgrove, Sydney. Her first saga, Ironbark, was published by Simon and Schuster in Australia and New Zealand in 2009 and 2010. Ghost Gum Valley was published in 2012 and 2013, and The Lace Balcony was published in 2014. Johanna’s novels have been translated into German and published in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She is currently writing her fifth Australian historical novel as well as the film adaptation of one of her published novels.
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Also by Johanna Nicholls
The Lace Balcony
Ghost Gum Valley
Ironbark
GOLDEN HOPE
First published in Australia in 2016 by
Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited
Suite 19A, Level 1, Building C, 450 Miller Street, Cammeray, NSW 2062
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Visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.au
© Johanna Nicholls 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
The right of Johanna Nicholls to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator:
Nicholls, Johanna, author.
Title:
Golden hope/Johanna Nicholls.
ISBN:
9781922052728 (paperback)
9781922052742 (ebook)
Subjects:
Australian fiction.
Historical fiction.
Dewey Number: A823.4
Cover image: THPStock/Shutterstock, Rob Blakers/Getty Images, Massonstock/iStock
Cover design: Christabella Designs
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
An extract of the Henry Lawson poem ‘Break O’Day’ is reproduced with permission, courtesy of the publisher, ETT Imprint, Exile Bay
Golden Hope Page 54