If you’re not a member of Goodreads, don’t worry – I’ll have a giveaway here on the blog, and for my newsletter subscribers, soon. But if you’re a keen reader, you might want to have a look at Goodreads – it’s a great way to keep track of your reading, share book discussions and recommendations with others, and discover new books.

Many survived the sinking and made it eventually to land, but in the events that followed, on February 16th at Radji Beach on Banka Island, 22 nurses were forced to walk into the sea and were gunned down by Japanese troops, with Vivian Bullwinkel the only survivor of that massacre. She eventually re-joined another 31 surviving nurses who became internees, denied even the status of prisoners of war; of these, 24 lived to finally come home in late 1945, after 3 1/2 years of captivity.

With the story of these nurses fresh in my mind, I’ve been thinking, this Valentine’s Day, about the nature and forms of love – of compassion and respect, of commitment and service. The nurses, ordinary women before the war, became extraordinary in their dedication to their duty in Malaya long before their evacuation from Singapore, and the survivors continued to nurse fellow prisoners throughout their long incarceration, despite appalling conditions and the almost total lack of medical supplies.

That’s a selfless form of love and compassion. I do not know if the women who died had boyfriends or lovers to love and cherish them – as army nurses, they were presumably single. In the few months prior to the Japanese invasion, many had apparently enjoyed the colonial social life of Singapore; they were officers, and therefore had access to the best Singapore had to offer. According to Shaw’s book, after the end of the war, three of the nurses married men they had met during their time in Malaya. Valentine’s Day was not then a big thing in Australia (certainly not the commercialised event it now is), but perhaps those nurses thought of their special friends, perhaps wrote to them, before the Vyner Brooke met its doom on Valentine’s Day.

I think of their courage – their courage in becoming nurses, to start with, and then in volunteering for army service; their courage in dealing, day in, day out, with the stark realities of nursing in a war zone, of tending to and ensuring the passengers of the Vyner Brooke were off the sinking ship before they themselves left it, and their courage in surviving through years of imprisonment. That courage awes me. The story is told that as the nurses at Radji beach walked into the surf, gunners lined up behind them, Matron Irene Drummond called out to them, “Chins up, girls. I’m proud of you and I love you all.”

So perhaps, today, in memory of their love, their courage, their lost and disrupted lives, it’s a good day to be grateful for our families and loved ones, to cherish and love them – not necessarily with flowers and chocolates, but with appreciation for the wonderful, special, individuals that they are and for the joy that they share with us.

I’ve pictured below two of the nurses who died at Radji Beach, the photos courtesy of the Australian War Memorial. Sister Mary McGlade was educated in my town; Sister Kathleen Neuss apparently came from Inverell, another town in the region.

Sister Mary Eleanor McGlade

Sister Kathleen Neuss

Rest in peace, Sisters. You are truly an inspiration.

ETA: Some links for more information about the sisters:
‘Found’ on ww2.gov.au
Report in Townsville Daily Bulletin, SEptember 1945
Vivian Bullwinkel and the Bangka Island Massacre

I am so thrilled with it. The draft was great, and everyone who’s seen it liked it – but the designer has tweaked a few things and made it even better. I am so looking forward to seeing it on the book itself, in just a few weeks!

Please note that this is for the German language edition of the book. (If any German-speaking book bloggers read this, please feel free to repost and spread the word!)

There wasn’t a lot of time between copy edits going in on the 9th January, and the proof pages arriving, but I did have time to have lunch with my friend Gemma, a local police sergeant who’s given very helpful procedural advice for each of my books:

Today I had lunch with Emily, my National Park ranger friend, who’s also been a fantastic help for Dead Heat – but I didn’t get a photo of her, this time.

Now it’s head down time, concentrating on getting the proof pages done so they can be mailed on Monday morning! The rest of the ‘family’, however, are having a much more relaxing time…

…. except for when they’re watching out for wildlife…

… but they didn’t see these two visitors:

I’ll be back to more regular blogging next week, after those proof pages are on their way back to Sydney!

Here’s few iPhone photos of the day:

With the Christmas Tree in the sunroom, we covered over the pool table to make a place for nibblies, entree etc. The first thing that went on it: a bunch of stunning hydrangeas from the garden, in a ewer that belonged to my maternal grandmother. The second thing on it: our traditional bowl of Christmas sweets and nuts – the rum balls were delicious!

Our Christmas Tree – before my sister and her family arrived, with some more presents to place under it.

We ate outside, in the leafy back garden.

Dad enjoyed the delicious food, and the break from the nursing home – and that’s the most important thing!

Although the sun shone on us, we kept a close watch on the storm clouds just to the south of us – but they passed us by, with only a few drops of rain later in the afternoon.

We finished our simple feast with Christmas pudding – pictured here as it ‘flames’. I do enjoy some Christmas pudding with brandy cream – which is why it’s usually my contribution to the meal! Now, thanks to my niece’s gift, I have two new pudding basins – a larger one, so I can make pudding for the family and have enough for second serves for everyone, and a smaller one, so G and I can have a pudding just for us (my old small pudding basin is rather battered and the pudding usually sticks to it.)

All in all, it was a good day. For those of you in the northern hemisphere still celebrating Christmas, may yours be joyful and full of love. For my Australian friends, enjoy the Boxing Day relaxation!

(If you’re not yet a member of ARRA, do consider joining! ARRA is a great organisation, and the $20 membership fee comes with a heap of benefits, including an informative and entertaining newsletter every month, member get-togethers, a readers’ convention every 2 years, and much more.)

Helene, Sandy and I have also put together a sampler – the first chapters from 6 of our books, so that you can get a taste, all in one place, of our writing. You can read the chapters on the web at the ARS website, or if you prefer, you can also download it here for your e-reader, as an .epub file, or a .mobi file (suitable for Kindles). We hope you enjoy sampling our work!

On Friday morning I packed up the car – clothes, Christmas presents, Christmas pudding and other food in the esky, bedding in case I stayed in a caravan park cabin on the way –  and set off south on the first stage of a two-day journey to Canberra. Yes, a lot of people do it in one day, and I have in the past, but at 10 hours it’s a long day, so I prefer to take two days, and a more leisurely pace. I stopped for a (late) lunch with the lovely Kylie Griffin who lives in a small community I’ve passed through many times but never stopped in. It was thoroughly enjoyable to have an hour or so with Kylie, meet her cats, and admire the covers for her books – her first, Vengeance Born, will be published in February.

I stayed the night in Gulgong, not quite half-way between home and Canberra. Gulgong’s claims to fame include the fact that famous Australian poet Henry Lawson lived in the town as a child. Much of the town’s mid-nineteenth century architecture remains, and when Lawson was featured on Australia’s first ten-dollar note (no longer in use), background drawings of Gulgong’s streetscape were included.

(I did take a few photos, but they’re on my camera and just right now I can’t find the lead to connect it to the laptop. I do have it with me… in a bag,…. somewhere…)

On Saturday, after a yoghurt and a cuppa for breakfast, I headed off at about 8am, down the road to Wellington, where I had delicious ‘second breakfast’ of raisin toast and chai at the wonderful Cactus Gallery and Cafe, located in a lovely old Spanish-Mission style building that once housed the catholic infants’ school. Now the gallery is stocked with gifts, clothes, homewares and other arts, and the cafe tables are inside and out, on the verandah and in the courtyard garden. The raisin toast was devine! I hope to be stopping there again, next time I’m driving through!

A little further down the road is Molong, then Canowindra, and I stopped for a little while in both towns, including a good chat with the owner of Canowindra’s patchwork and quilting shop, during which I stared in awe and admiration at several of her stunning, beautiful quilts. At Cowra, I had lunch in the Rose Garden Coffe Shop (much nicer than the next-door MacDonalds!) and at Booroowa I bought a coke at the bakery to cool me down and keep me awake… and yes, a chocolate eclair begged me to buy it. From Booroowa it’s only an hour and a half to Canberra, much of it on highways, so I was in Dad’s room by 4.30pm.

It’s been a few years since I’ve been able to do te drive to Canberra in such a leisurely way, by myself – and a nice way to celebrate on Friday, exactly a year since my surgery.

I did consider stopping to take photos on the way, and a couple of times I did, but I was thinking as I drove how photographs really can’t convey the experience of travelling through the landscape, and the vastness of it. I love the trip, and the transitions between the different regions. The high tablelands of the first hour, before dropping down the Moonbi hills to Tamworth, on the north-west slopes, with remains of volcanic vents dotting the plains. Then on the slopes, lines of low hills interspersed with flatter plains, the land used for cropping and grazing, summer sun turning green-ish paddocks towards yellows and browns. Sometimes the views are extensive, sometimes bordered by trees along the roads, or hills running parallel. Always, subtle changes along the trip – different types of eucalypts, different types of soils. Each town, too, has its own character – Gunnedah’s wide, straight streets, Gulgong’s narrow, hilly ones, Canowindra’s ‘bendy’ main street.

I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and I’m looking forward to the return journey, in a week or so’s time.

Yesterday afternoon, I caught a bus up to Sydney, for a meeting today with Hachette.  I did admire some of the views on the way, but I confess that I mostly ‘admired’ the inside of my eyelids! I’ll head back to Canberra on the 5pm bus, getting in at 8.30 or so, and then I have about a week with my family, with Christmas preparations and celebrations, and just enjoying their company. We don’t go overboard at Christmas, keeping things quite simple, and I like it that way

Edited to add: I need to either reduce the size of the book cover images in the left sidebar, or get rid of them altogether. Hmmm….

I’ll decide tomorrow. It’s late and I’m heading for my bed just now.

Now that the uni marking is all done, I’m doing some Christmas sewing and knitting, finalising the sampler for the Australian Romantic Suspense website, catching up with ‘paper’work, finishing setting up the new computers, and working on copyedits for Dead Heat.

There will be a proper blog post sometime soon… and maybe even a new cover to share

But in the meantime, I know my regular readers are wondering how our newest family member is settling in. I think the following photos will answer that question quite eloquently:

Things Skye likes about this place:

1. When it’s raining, she gets to sleep in the Really Big Kennel!
2. The humans are trainable, especially when it comes to playing and snuggling!
3. When she chews a toy to bits, a human sometimes gives her a new toy!
4. The humans have treats in their pockets sometimes!
5. It’s such fun to pull the stuffing out of the doggy cushions; a human usually comes along and puts it back, then she can pull it out again! It’s a great game!
6. Carrots! Crunchy, munchy bits of raw carrot!