Cirrus@Austlit

'In the dark before dawn on 5 March 1899, half way up the eastern edge of Cape York Peninsula, five men camping on a sand ridge about forty feet above sea level and half a mile behind the beach found themselves waist deep in the ocean. Since midnight, the four Aboriginal troopers and a white officer of the Native Police had been huddled under a blanket as Australia's deadliest cyclone, and one of the world's fiercest, blew away their tents and killed or scattered their horses. Just after 5 am, as the eye passed north over Cape Melville and wrecked the pearling fleet anchored there, the ocean swept inland over the ridge, spoiling the officer's watch.' (Introduction)

'The trial and execution of an eleven-year-old Australian boy for espionage in World War Two doesn’t seem like the sort of story anyone could easily forget. As a nation, though, we have not only forgotten the story of Dickie Manson but have a broader blind spot when it comes to Australia’s shared history with Papua New Guinea. PNG’s history and culture remain what they have always been to most Australians: overlooked and often misunderstood.' (Publication abstract)

'The little known and intriguing WWII story of an eleven-year-old Australian schoolboy who was shot by the Japanese in Rabaul in 1942 as a suspected spy - a compelling story of spies, volcanoes, history and war.

'In May 1942, in the town of Rabaul in the Australian territory of New Guinea, five Australian civilians were taken by Japanese soldiers to a pit at the base of a volcano and executed as spies.

'A mother, her brother, her husband and her friend. And her 11-year-old son.

Who were these people and what had led them to this terrible end, under the shadow of a volcano?

'Acclaimed 4th Estate author and award-winning science journalist Ian Townsend has uncovered a fascinating story that sheds new light on a largely forgotten but desperate battle fought on Australian territory. The Australian Government, unable to reinforce its small garrison, abandoned more than 1500 Australian soldiers and civilians as ‘hostages to fortune' in the face of the irresistible Japanese advance. Set against the romantic, dramatic and ultimately tragic backdrop of Rabaul in WWII, this is a wholly intriguing narrative of Australian history, military conflict and volcanology, woven together with the story of one ordinary but doomed Australian family.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It is 1899, and one of the fiercest storms in history is brewing - a hurricane named Mahina.

'To a remote part of the Queensland coast come the hundreds of sails of the northern pearling fleets, and a native policeman trying to solve a murder. Nearly two thousand men, women and children are gathering around Cape Melville, right in the path of the storm that is about to cause Australia's deadliest natural disaster.

'Based on real events, this is the story of an unstoppable force of nature and the birth and death of an Australian dream.' (Publisher's blurb)