Cirrus@Austlit

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

“Oscar Hopkins, the hydrophobic, noisy-kneed son of a preacher, renounces his father’s stern religion in favour of the Anglican Church. Lucinda Leplastrier, a frizzy-haired heiress, impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. When the two finally meet, on board a ship to New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for gambling and risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming mutual affection. Love will prove to be their ultimate gamble.”
(Source: Penguin Random House Blurb (2015))

John Boult was a raw sixteen-year-old apprentice on the wool-clipper Emilia Denholm from Melbourne to London via Cape Horn.

Fresh from a cosy Melbourne home, he was intoxicated with the glamour of the sea and ships– until he encountered the huge and malign Captain Trygg.

The year was 1913. John Boult was among the last to be apprenticed on the giant sailing clippers– but some traditions of the old seafarers died hard…

The Man Who Stayed Below is a dazzling sea adventure by one of Australia’s finest poets, vividly calling up the vanished days of sailing ships– and the lives of the men who worked on them.

'Leverson, the narrator at the centre of these stories, calls himself a 'people freak.' Seduced by north Queensland's sultry beauty and unique strangeness, he is as fascinated by the invading hordes of misfits from the south as by the old established Queenslanders. Leverson's ironical yet compassionate view makes every story, every incident, a pointed example of human weakness – or strength.' (Source: Publisher's blurb (Penguin)).