When I was 18, fresh out of high school and with a pocket full of dreams, I boarded a tiny yellow plane at Quirindi airport, waved my family goodbye, and disappeared into the vast open place known as the Australian outback.
I grew up in rural Australia but there’s a big difference between the rolling, green hills of the Great Dividing Range and the open skies, flat clay pans and never-ending red dirt roads.
I spent a year in this magical place, but as my life grabbed me and ran me through the years and away from the outback, something kept drawing me back.
In the past decade I’ve spent a big part of my time travelling through the outback, and it’s provided me with the ideal backdrop for mystery, people going missing and the frustrating search to find them.
Abandoned homesteads, falling down shearing sheds, far-flung paddocks so far from anywhere you could disappear and never be found.
Not to mention morning light, afternoon light, blazing sunsets that paint the sky orange, red, gold, pink and purple, lightning cracks followed by booming thunder and drenching rain, full moons in a starry sky, the endless chitter chatter of outback birds, paddocks moving in the shimmering haze as hundreds of kangaroos cross from one side to the other and sleek and deadly brown snakes that stop your heart from beating when they appear from nowhere. Also cowboys, don’t forget cowboys!
I love them all but I think the Rhiannon’s Last Look cover is my favourite.
When I came across this building and saw the chair facing out the door, it filled me with a sense of yearning and loss and how it feels when someone goes missing and doesn’t come home.
However, if they are fortunate enough to have a Detective Rhiannon McVee in their lives, hope that they will be found is never far away.
