At the last Crime & Justice Festival way back whenever that was (feels like a hundred years ago), Lucy mentioned this book, and that it was a bit of a rarity. And I was kicking myself as I had seen a copy of it earlier in the bookshop but somebody more awake than me bet me to it.
So a bit of a quest was launched (I do so love a quest), and was lucky enough to track down a copy in a very nice secondhand bookshop in Ballarat - no luck alas with a brand new copy.
Boy I'm glad I did - even if I had to drive from Bendigo to Ballarat in one day!
From the Blurb:
Little is known of Mary Fortune. She kept her identity secret by writing under the names of Wair Wander or W.W.. Arriving in Australia with her young son she supported herself by writing about life on the goldfields and in the cities. She became Australia's first female writer of crime fiction.
Opening Lines:
From the first short story in the book: Arrival in Melbourne
Twenty-six years is a long time to look back upon, and when those years have been passed in a series of frequent change of place and circumstances, and of people, the time appears longer still.
"To fall asleep and dream deams that change as quickly as the forms in an unsteady kaleidoscope, and to awaken with a bewildered feeling that you are not yourself but having changed places with some other identity, must be a sensation akin to that I experienced when I opened my eyes in the morning after my first sleep on the diggings."
Little is known of Mary Fortune. She kept her identity secret by writing under the names of Waif Wander or W.W. Arriving in Australia with her young son she supported herself by writing about life on the goldfields and in the cities. She became Australia's first female writer of crime fiction.