Just Visiting Read online

Just Visiting

  Book 1

  Crocodile Sprit Dreaming Series

  Novel by

  Graham Wilson

  Copyright

  Just Visiting

  Graham Wilson

  Copyright Graham Wilson 2014

  BeyondBeyond Books Edition

  ISBN: 9780987197184

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior approval of the author.

  For permission to use contact Graham Wilson by email at [email protected]

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Firstly thank you to the readers of the previous version of this book, ‘Just Visiting’. Your comments, mostly positive have encouraged me to keep going with this book and series. Reviews, in particular those negative, give great insight into how to improve the telling of a story and, along with professional editing advice, has proved most valuable in helping me see areas where both the story and the way it is told need to be improved.

  Particular thanks to Alexandra Nahlous who did a structural review of the previous book. From this came many ideas for improvement which I have incorporated.

  Thanks you to my family and close friends, particularly my wife, Mary, who supported me on my writing journey.

  Thank you to the many backpackers and other foreign travellers I met while living in the Northern Territory. Some of you shared my travels, many shared your own experiences of both the world from which you came and of your experiences travelling in this land. From you came a major part of the idea for this story.

  Most significantly thankyou to a large unseen crocodile, probably still living in a remote Arnhem Land billabong, who almost had me for dinner. The teeth marks are still visible on my leg today, giving me my own close encounter to recount in outback bars.

  That sense of the silent power of this predator stays with me still and, along with aboriginal mythology and other stories, has fed my fascination for these huge ancient creatures, barely changed since the time of the dinosaurs. Some of the largest I have seen in very remote places rival those in my imagined stories.

  Author’s Note

  This is a novel set in Australia’s Northern Territory, a place where I lived and worked for four decades; including in small towns, aboriginal communities, cattle stations and among remote, rugged and beautiful natural places for which it is famous, places with names like Uluru and Kakadu. These provide the background to this story.

  This novel is a work of fiction. The characters are not real people. However, elements of stories have a real basis, as experienced by myself, or as stories of the bush, told around campfires or over bars, somewhere in the Australian Outback. While the general locations described around the Northern Territory exist, many finer details are not accurate; they are created as a canvass on which to paint the story.

  Backpackers are part of outback Australia. Occasional horror stories occur and get wide coverage. Some, like the Joanna Lees story, or the awful deeds of Ivan Milat contributed ideas to this novel. However these are rare events, as likely to happen in cities or other countries. They do not typify most people’s experiences of these places.

  The setting of this novel is an external frame for the story. It tells of a journey of two people through places and within themselves. In bad situations they do awful things, despite desiring goodness. This reflects human experience. We all have the ability to make terrible choices and do great evil if we cease to value life, but even the worst of people may have parts that are good and decent. This book also tells impossible love story, where love is destined for destructive failure.

  Alongside this story of two people this book seeks to capture the essence of a place called the Northern Territory of Australia, the centre and north of the Australian continent. This land remains alive in my imagination from when I lived and worked in it. Despite the coming of modern civilisation; with roads, air transport, communication and comfort; the intrinsic character of this place, the ‘Territory’, remains little altered. It is what Ernestine Hill called, in her famous book of that name, ‘a land too vast for human imagination.’ Wildlife remains abundant. Stations still muster cattle and buffalo for a living. Aboriginal people live off the land, as they have done for millennia past. Stockmen tell tales around campfires, gazing in awe at immense star filled skies. This is a place where life moves slowly, as befits a land where time is driven by nature. Brilliant desert colours, huge tropical storms and endless emptiness live on.

  My thanks to innumerable real characters of the Northern Territory who contributed to the making and telling of this story, by lighting creative fires in my imagination through sharing their own stories and memories.

  This is the first book in the Crocodile Spirit Series of 5 novels published by this author. Books in this series which follow are:

  Book 2 –Crocodile Man (revised print and ebook available – previous edition titled The Diary)

  Book 3 – The Empty Place (first edition print and ebook)

  Book 4 – Lost Girls (first edition ebook only)

  Book 5 –Sunlit Shadow Dance (first edition ebook only)

  For those who wish to read those books in ebook form they are all available from major ebook retailers including Amazon, iBooks, Kobo and Smahswords.

  If you wish to contact the author directly in relation to his books or other writing information please email the address below:

  [email protected]