Growing up, my family always spent part of school vacations at the seaside town of Lakes Entrance, in Gippsland, where we were lucky enough to have a holiday house my grandparents built back in the 1950’s. Dad usually only made it for a night here and there. Being a dairy farmer he didn’t get much time away from our 5th generation property at Tinamba.
Ahhh … those long, hot summer days. Those uncomplicated years where having fun was the aim of the game. Do you think back and smile and wonder what happened to your first love? The boy you thought so hot, who bought you a bag of fairy floss from the caravan flashing bright lights to attract all and sundry to donuts and dagwood dogs.
In my latest (and seventh) book, LAKE HILL, that’s exactly where we head. Back to Lakes Entrance, that stunning seaside town tucked into the south-east coast of Victoria. And while Julia Gunn does find out what happened to her first love, Rick Halloran, with life shattering consequences, I’m wondering what happened to mine? Perhaps he became the chef he wanted to be – like Julia who, in an effort to start her life over again, opens a café beside a stunning mountain lake? Or maybe he became a farmer, a rodeo cowboy and a sculptor like Rick, my hunky hero in this book?
Or maybe he became an author and grazier like me?
Through a mate we found one of the best blokes in Australia to teach him how to train a working dog, and I went along thinking I could write about a character doing the same in LAKE HILL. Turns out that step took us to the Pilbara to work on a half million-acre cattle station for a mustering season, and whilst our son decided the working dog arena wasn’t for him, guess who’s now got a Kelpie? Talk about living life through your kids!
So maybe our next trip should be a return to the past? To Lakes Entrance with it’s mini golf, carnivals and the surf beach? The kids would adore that. But I might give the hot dates a miss this time round, because I’m married.
All her life Julia Gunn has been weighed down – first by a controlling father, then by a staid older husband, and always by a long-buried secret from her teenage years.
Except en route to a new life on the coast at Lakes Entrance she finds herself – courtesy of a rockslide – stuck in the remote mountain town of Lake Grace.
Yet maybe fate is on her side. Because Lake Grace is home to Rick Halloran – ex-rodeo king, sculptor and grazier – and the man with whom she enjoyed a brief, unforgettable romance twenty years ago.
Julia is finally on the verge of the life she’s always wanted.