Debboggy said:
Thanks Jerm, I'll be sure to take everyone up on any offers of help. I could use it.
Bubblegirl, I'm in Central California. I'd love to live ten minutes from the beach! The closest ones here are about one to two hours drive.
Adelaide sounds vaguely familiar. I think I've heard the FaithWriter Aussies mention it before or something. Val Clark is a FaithWriter over in Darwin and just wrote a script for Project Green Light Australia. She's one of only two people that have read my script so far and had some useful suggestions.
Deb Porter is a volunteer who pretty much runs FaithWriters. She's the Administrator for the boards, Weekly Challenge Coordinator and Editor of the FaithWriter Magazine. She's currently in Sydney, but she and her husband Steve have bought property in Queensland.
Karen Ellengikel (sp?) also lives in Sydney with her tribe of kids (5!) and is doing fairly well with her writing.
I'm a bit jealous because they are all meeting for a writers' conference in Katoomba, so they get to see each other face to face. I doubt you actually know any of these lovely ladies, but thought I'd mention their names on the off chance you might. Wouldn't that be an interesting coincidence?
Sometimes it's a small world, and the web makes it even smaller.
I'm from California .. LA ... but relocated to British Columbia when I was in my early 30's. Had the grand privelage of visiting in Australia in 98 for six months. Flew into Sydney on UAL Flight 15 non-stop 747-400 service from LAX, in C
onnoisseur Class no less. Fooled around Sydney for ten days then drove to Noosa up above Brisbane a ways in Queensland. I had a buddy there, in Tuchekoi on the St. Mary's River. He didn't know we were coming, walked right in on him and blew his mind. I met this guy in Bali, a Sydney boy through and through and more Aussie than any you'll ever meet, I mean this guy not only claims first boat status, he claims "first foot" status ... meaning he's descended from the guy in the first boat ashore from the first ship and became the first white man to set foot upon Australian soil. Colin MacLauchlan, singer/songwriter, surfer, clothing magnate, entertainer, and all round Mr. Australia, and now one of Queensland's reigning Kings. Well, he went to Noosa in the 60's to surf, when it was like an uninhabited Pacific atoll and aboriginals still lived in thatch roofed houses.
We stayed with Colin for a month, he has five acres in a lovely little valley, recording studio, an Aussie Queensland style house. Then we rented a place in Noosa and based ourselves out of there, a nice two bedroom apartment overlooking the back bay, three minutes form Noosa beach. Had a little rented car of some kind, an Aussie car or maybe it was Japanese, don't recall. Colin drove (I kept getting hacked out on the turnabouts) and took us on two and three day tours of the hinterlands and the coastal interior and Fraser Island, the largest pile of sand on the planet. Rainforest. Beaches, sweet river valleys, lovely little towns up in the hinterlands with great pubs, lotta sugar grown in there.
Ostensibly, I was doing research for a movie I wanted to write, and did in fact get around to doing quite a bit of that. Drove up to Townsville doing research, and to Long Reach, but went out to the GBR for the aventure, ditto Ayers Rock. My story is an American/Aussie tale that sets in War 2, in fact, the opening scene is the Japanese bombing Clarke Field in the Philippines on December 8th, 1941, same day as they hit Pearl Harbor (the international date line is between Manila and Oahu, so the dates are different, Pearl was December 7th, Clarke Field was the 8th, but it was the same day for all intents and purposes.
So we start when the war starts.
The Japanese were of course after oil and the oil was in present day Indonesia ... Sumatra, Java, the Western half of Papua New Guinea, Borneo. A Dutch Company we know as Shell Oil was there, developing the fields and pumping black gold. The Japanese swept down from the North and conquered everything in their path and by March of 1942 were threatening Australia. They actually bombed Townsville and Darwin and a few places in between. They were massing forces on Bouganiville, Truk, Espirito Santo, Guadalcanal, and on New Guinea, preparing to invade Australia. It would be a Normandy-like enterprise, huge.
Wouldn't have been so bad except the Australian Army was in the Middle East, helping to defend the Crown from Nazi assault, having been called there by the Queen herself a year before. Australia was wide open.
GEN MacArthur, the American Commander in the Far East whom the Japanese had defeated in the Philippines and sent packing to Australia, was in Sydney, the
Australia Hotel, and he knew what was about to happen. And he dreaded it. The Japanese, owning Australia? It was unthinkable. Yet ...
So he calls Washington and pleads for help. Only to discover that Washington is all focused on trying to save England from Nazi invasion ... and Australia is 15,000 miles away and who, really, cares all that much?
But if Mac doesn't get help, the Aussie Goose is cooked.
Enter our hero, who naturally understands the Aussie plight and knows if he leads a force down there and staves off the Japanese, they'll make him a General ... and he's only 34. They've got him strapped to a desk but he wants to fly. Nobody else wants the mission, and initially he's even begudging 'cause he knows his wife ain't gonna like it. And she doesn't. And says so. Besides, he knows it ain't a slam dunk. In fact, the odds are long against him, miles long. But he fights off any second thoughts and jumps in with both feet.
Well, we all know that the Japanese never invaded Austraila, perhaps a vague recollection of some history text for some of us here, perhaps even many here but nevertheless we all know it. Hence we can assume our hero is successful in his bid to "save Australia." You can see the movie one day and get the inside scoop on how he pulls this off and what fate has in store for him at the end.
His outfits were based at Townsville and Long Reach, and a place called Mareeba or something ... I didn't manage to get out there. But I did manage to find a few living veterans of that time in Townsville and was able to talk with them and get lots of good information about what went on back in the day, photos too. Museums too of course, and libraries and small historical societies. I came home feeling well prepared to write the Third Act of "CHOICE OF HEROES" which sets entirely in Queensland and in the air over the islands to the North and on the sea round them. It ends on the Allied victory over the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea, in May of 1942, and the Aussie Victory at Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea.
Sidetrack city!
Anyway I adore Queensland and the entire West Coast of Australia. Six months wasn't enough to even scratch the surface but it was all quite grand and marvelous, and Noosa Beach is just about the best beach on the planet. Great international scene there too. We will return. Best surfing ever.
Gota love Down Under, land of the Southern Cross.
