I’ve been working lately with Australian adventure
writer, Kez Wickham St. George. We had been talking about cross marketing
between the U.S. and Australia. Kez creates her stories from her real-life
adventures and explorations in the Australian Outback. My kind of research. Kez told me the most
engaging story, I have to paraphrase some of it because, like any good writer,
she told a lot of story. It seems that after the peak of Covid passed, several
families headed out into the remotest of the Outback for a caravan trip. As
luck would have it, they developed an oil leak in the Jeep, lots of acrid
smoke, and had to layover in a ‘caravan bay’ for a couple of days.
I quote, ‘This night one woman caught my eye, she looked familiar, yet I did not know her, she was from Cairns and traveling to NSW. I introduced myself, she asked me about my accent, “I’m a Kiwi (New Zealander)” she informed her family had married into the Maori people. My ears twitched, as also to have ties to a Maori family, I asked her for names of where they were? When she said the name of my hometown, so many memories filling my mind, now the attention of the entire gang around the fire pit was engaged. As this woman said names, times and places, the air around me went still, the family she was talking about were my next-door neighbors for ten years [back in New Zealand]. She told me that her sister married into this family. Meant to be? What struck me was what a small world we live in, I’m sitting around a campfire in Western Australia in a tiny county shire Dandaragan she knows a family I once knew in a small fishing village Ngunguru in Northland New Zealand, different countries the Pacific Ocean plus many thousands of kilometers between us, wow….. The story continues in the Camp fire trilogy beginning with Metal Mermaid.’
As you read one one of Kez’s adventure stories, maybe even Metal Mermaid, and when the main characters are in an isolated ‘public layover’, imagine that those two ladies at the next campfire are reminiscing about their families back in New Zealand…. because now you know Kez's Back Story.
