Many thanks are also due to my nephew Nicholas Murphy for his unerring geological knowledge regarding love heart stones.
Thank you Bruce Long, Dr Wei Bei Chen, Dr Allison Ramsey, Dr Dilip Kapur, Mary-Anne Edge from Multiple Solutions and Patricia James of DEEWR.
All my thanks Kate Herd for your etching ‘Midnight’ 2008, beneath which in 2009 and ’10 I typed the first and final drafts.
I doubt I could have written Foal’s Bread but for the loving determination inspired by my previous agent Barbara Mobbs. My deepest thanks always for your comments on an earlier version of Chapter 1 and for your ongoing willingness to believe that I had another novel in me.
Deepest thanks to my present agent Gaby Naher for shepherding the book into such flourishing life.
To Ivor Indyk, thank you for first publishing in HEAT #09 my short story ‘The Third Triplet’ from which much of the feeling of Foal’s Bread then sprang. Your belief in my writing has strengthened my pen. Dear Meredith Rose, this too has been your impact in my life. When most my desire to keep writing has faltered, your presence has helped bring it back and in particular I’m remembering a long Foal’s Bread talk in Carlton in 2008.
To Jane Palfreyman, Ali Lavau, Clara Finlay and Aziza Kuypers of Allen & Unwin, I’m still astounded at your unerring intelligence re what had to be corrected. Your editorial signposts were trustworthy and true. Thank you.
To be publishing my first novel in sixteen years, again with you Jane, seems nothing short of miraculous.
Finally, thank you to all the horses of so long ago, but in particular Trooper, Flicker, Winkle, Missy, Tarka, Amigo, Grey Chancellor, Star Rebel, Red River, Chester, Galla, Willy and Bellini. As poet Geoff Page wrote in his tribute to Silver Wind, his childhood mare, these were the horses that most taught me ‘a truth that still can be of use/ attempting other paddocks’.
Gillian Mears grew up in the northern New South Wales towns of Grafton and Lismore. Acclaim came early, with her short-story collections and novels winning major prizes. Her books include Ride a Cock Horse, Fineflour, The Mint Lawn, The Grass Sister and A Map of the Gardens. More recently she has been living in the Adelaide Hills, where she wrote Foal’s Bread.
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