by Judy Nunn
Thomas and his grandsons reached the vastness of Sydney Common where cattle and goats grazed and where, on misty mornings, groups of gentlemen regularly held swan-shooting parties. When they had settled themselves on a grassy hillock in the late afternoon sunshine, Thomas told them his story.
Judy Nunn
Maralinga
During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided … without its people’s knowledge.
A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men – a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956.
Maralinga is a story of British Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a twelve-month posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion; Harold Dartleigh, Deputy Director of MI6 and his undercover operative Gideon Melbray; Australian Army Colonel Nick Stratton and the enigmatic Petraeus Mitchell, bushman and anthropologist. They all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape, infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates.
Maralinga is also a story of love; a love so strong that it draws the adventurous young English journalist Elizabeth Hoffmann halfway around the world in search of the truth. And Maralinga is a story of heartbreak; heartbreak brought to the innocent First Australians who had walked their land unhindered for 40,000 years.
Maralinga … a desolate place where history demands an emerging nation choose between hell and reason.
Judy Nunn
Floodtide
This novel is a brilliant observation of turbulent times in the mighty ‘Iron Ore State’ – Western Australia. Floodtide traces the fortunes of four men and four families over four memorable decades: The prosperous post-war 1950s when childhood is idyllic and carefree in the small, peaceful city of Perth … The turbulent 60s when youth is caught up in the conflict of the Vietnam War and free love reigns … The avaricious 70s when Western Australia’s mineral boom sees the rise of a new young breed of aggressive entrepreneurs … The corrupt 80s and the birth of ‘WA Inc’, when the alliance of greedy politicians and powerful businessmen brings the state to its knees, even threatening the downfall of the federal government.
Each of the four who travel this journey has a story to tell. An environmentalist fights to save the primitive and beautiful Pilbara coast from the careless ravaging of mining conglomerates; a Vietnam War veteran rises above crippling injuries to discover a talent that gains him an international reputation; and an ambitious geologist joins forces with a hard-core businessman to lead the way in the growth of Perth from a sleepy town to a glittering citadel. But, as the 90s ushers in a new age when innocence is lost, all four are caught up in the irreversible tides of change, and actions must be answered for.
Floodtide is a character-driven, merciless rush of blood from the pen of Judy Nunn, one of Australia’s master storytellers.
Judy Nunn
Heritage
In a time when desperate people were seizing with both hands the chance for freedom, refugees from more than seventy nations gathered beneath the Southern Cross to forge a new national identity. They came from all over wartorn Europe to the mountains of Australia to help realise one man’s dream: the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. One of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century, the Snowy Scheme was being built with pride from the sweat and blood of displaced people.
People of all races and creeds tunnelled through a mountain range to turn the course of a majestic river, trying to put to rest ghosts from the inferno of history: buried memories, unimaginable pain and deadly secrets.
From the ruins of Berlin to the birth of Israel, from the Italian Alps to the Australian high country, Heritage is a passionate and fast-paced tale of rebirth, struggle, sacrifice and redemption, and a tribute to those who gave meaning to the Australian spirit.
Judy Nunn
Pacific
After fulfilling her dream of performing on the London stage, Australian actress Samantha Lindsay is thrilled when she scores her first Hollywood movie role. She’s to play Sarah Blackston, a character loosely based on World War II heroine Mamma Tack, an English nurse who was invaluable to the US forces and native population of the New Hebrides during the conflict in the Pacific. It’s the role of a lifetime.
On location in Vanuatu, uncanny parallels between history and fiction emerge and Sam begins a quest for the truth. Just who was the real Mamma Tack? And what was the tragic secret that threatens to destroy people in the present day? The answers reveal not only secrets of the past but Sam’s own destiny.
A masterful interweaving of the lives of two passionate women and two worlds, Pacific is Judy Nunn at her enthralling best.
Judy Nunn
Territory
Territory is a story of the Top End and the people who dare to dwell there. Of a family who carved an empire from the escarpments of Kakadu to the Indian Ocean and defied God or Man to take it from them. Of Spitfire pilot Terence Galloway, who brings his English bride, Henrietta, home from the Battle of Britain to Bullalalla cattle station, only to be faced with the desperate defence of Darwin against the Imperial Japanese Air Force.
It is also a story of their sons, Malcolm and Kit, two brothers who grow up in the harsh but beautiful environment of the Northern Territory, and share a baptism of fire as young men in the jungles of war-torn Vietnam.
And what of the Dutch East Indies treasure ship which foundered off Western Australia in 1629? How does the Batavia’s horrific tale of mutiny and murder touch the lives of the Galloways and other Territorians - like Foong Lee, the patriarch of the Darwin Chinese community, and Jackie Yoorunga, the famous Aboriginal stockman? What is the connection between the infamous ‘ship of death’ and the Aborigines that compels a young anthropologist to discover the truth?
From the blazing inferno that was Darwin on 19 February 1942 to the devastation of Cyclone Tracy, from the red desert to the tropical shore, Territory is a mile-a-minute read from one of Australia’s best loved writers.
