Dis­cover this pirate at Pen­guin Books

While Rose’s ship the Uranie waits at anchor in Fre­man­tle har­bour Black Jack Ander­son has made a sur­prise return. He appeared on the hori­zon this week in the form of a con­tact from jour­nal­ist Angela Pow­nall who is writ­ing an arti­cle for the West Aus­tralian about our most noto­ri­ous pirate.

Later this week the Perth Writer’s Fes­ti­val comes to town with lots of inter­est­ing events and dis­plays. Don’t miss the very pop­u­lar Free Fam­ily Fun Day next Sun­day at the Uni­ver­sity of West­ern Aus­tralia. Many of your favourite WA authors and illus­tra­tors will be there and they have some great activ­i­ties for you to get involved in. I will be launch­ing Baby Ani­mal Farm by Karen Blair at 10.30am and you will be able to get up close and per­sonal with some real baby animals.

Watch out for pirates and explor­ers though. You just never know when or where they will pop up next.

The words on the ban­ner say ‘LC Freycinet, Navigator’

Hav­ing met with his great, great grand­son, Henry, in Paris recently, imag­ine how sur­prised I was to see Rose’s hus­band, Louis de Freycinet, in the main street of Bun­bury, West­ern Australia!

Peter and I were on our way to Mar­garet River, where the Freycinet name was, for many years, attached to one of the motels. We hap­pened to stop off in Bun­bury and there was Louis. His por­trait is, at the moment, sail­ing high above the main street in a very colour­ful yacht, in the com­pany of some other famous sea­far­ing explor­ers who vis­ited our shores in the days before the British flag was firmly planted in the sand at King George Sound (Albany), thus adding the whole of Aus­tralia to the British Empire.

In 1801 Louis de Freycinet was a nav­i­ga­tor on board the Nat­u­ral­iste which sailed in con­voy with the Geo­graphe. Both ships were under the com­mand of Nicholas Baudin whose explo­rations of our south west coast have left us with the last­ing lega­cies of Cape Nat­u­ral­iste and Geo­graphe Bay. Although there was no love lost between the two men, Baudin did rec­og­nize Louis de Freycinet’s excep­tional tal­ents as a nav­i­ga­tor and leader by pro­mot­ing him to Cap­tain of a ship (Casua­r­ina) that had to be added to the con­voy when the Nat­u­ral­iste was sent home to France car­ry­ing all the sci­en­tific mate­r­ial and records of the voy­age up to that point.

It was dur­ing this expe­di­tion with Baudin that Louis began map­ping the coast­line around Shark Bay and dis­cov­ered its amaz­ingly dry air, clear skies and unin­ter­rupted view of the heav­ens. Thir­teen years later the mem­ory of these per­fect con­di­tions for obser­va­tion no doubt had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on Louis’ deci­sion to per­suade the French Gov­ern­ment to send him back to Shark Bay, to con­tinue the work he had begun with Baudin.

Enter Rose … the beau­ti­ful, charm­ing, intel­li­gent, but head­strong and deter­mined girl Louis had recently mar­ried. And that’s where my lat­est story begins.

Henry de Freycinet

While I was in Paris I was able to meet with Henry de Freycinet. He is the present Baron de Freycinet, the cura­tor or the Archive de Laage and a direct descen­dant of Rose’s hus­band, Louis de Freycinet.

Henry was in Paris dur­ing one of the week­ends that I was there and we had break­fast together at the Cafe Vauban, oppo­site where we were stay­ing. This meet­ing, twelve months after he gen­er­ously allowed me to access the Archive de Laage and gave me a great deal of help and direc­tion, has been an impor­tant one for the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of Rose’s story.

Once again Henry has been enor­mously help­ful. Since I emailed him the draft he has gone through the man­u­script very thor­oughly, under­lin­ing French expres­sions that sound too mod­ern, cor­rect­ing Naval terms and adding details that will give more authen­tic­ity to the book.

Thanks Henry. Your wealth of knowl­edge, and will­ing­ness to share it, are inspiring.

Last time we were in Paris we spot­ted Miss Llewellyn-Jones’s pale green scooter parked on the foot­path that we walk along each morn­ing on our way to the boulan­gerie. We couldn’t believe that even an enter­pris­ing madamaselle like Miss L-J could travel so far from coun­try Weatern Aus­tralia. But there was the evi­dence right before our eyes.
This time we caught a glimpse of Rose de Freycinet in the Tuil­lerie Gar­dens, which are quite close to where we are liv­ing at the moment. There she was in her long skirt, her feath­ered hat and button-up boots. Her short blonde hair was curl­ing around her face, just as it does in the por­trait we have of her. I looked for her nephew, Lodoix, who was almost cer­tainly there some­where. But he must have been off climb­ing a tree. Since Rose was a great tree-climber when she was his age she would cer­tainly approve of that.

I don’t have access to my photo file here, so I can’t show you the por­trait of Rose until I get home. But you will see it. Keep watching.

Happy New Year

I have always believed that a good story will appeal to any age group. Now we have the proof!

In 2009, one-year-old Naomi received an advance copy of Miss Llewellyn-Jones Goes to Town as a present for her very first Christ­mas. The book had not yet been released, but it was ded­i­cated to her so we felt she was enti­tled to spe­cial treat­ment. She loved the book to bits — lit­er­ally. Two years on, when that copy had fallen apart, she demanded another one. By then she was more aware of how to han­dle a book so the sec­ond copy, although just as well loved, is in bet­ter shape at this stage.

Miss Llewellyn-Jones Goes to Town, writ­ten by Elaine For­re­stal, illus­trated by Moira Court

The other day Moira Court met an ‘older’ lady who had just bought a copy of the same book to give to her friend on her 91st birthday.

Many happy returns  - of the birth­day and the book.