HORACE and the COIN

This book is not a Bill Bryson travel tale, or a Clive Cussler adventure classic, nor is it a Lee Childs tough guy drama. In many ways it is a Shakespearean love story with tragedies and murder.

An English travel writer from the Cotswolds, named Horace Winterbottom, takes a trip around Australia. Picture a Ricky Gervais lookalike, highlighting the colloquial consciousness of Australians, dressed in a Derby Bowler, sunglasses, a top half funeral suit, board shorts and thongs. And there you have Horace. On this journey he meets strangers and characters with various and nefarious habits. The tale is spiced with the sour lemon of death, the sweet honey of humour, and the arid and wet wonders of our vast ocean lapping continent. All this is told through the eyes and words of our travel writer, with the occasional comment of a two-dollar coin. Horace involves himself with the characters of Australia.

For others in this tale, exchanging a coin becomes a payment. Love is a currency, and it does not always get spent wisely. There is the love of vengeance and unrequited passion. There are life changes, which involve fear, hate, and just plain good and bad luck. The coin carries more than just a message, it offers hope. From lustful flings, great white shark encounters, exotic animal theft, the illegal diamond trade, Broome sunsets, Aboriginal characters, and top-end Darwinian encounters, the tale evolves. It flows with blunt humour, loose tongues, and sharp knives. It is a tale bookended with swords of lust, want, hate, and desire. There are numerous characters, all connectable within six degrees of separation. Then there is always the chance of unexpected love, even for Horace.

When was the last time you looked at an Australian two headed two-dollar coin? It is mostly worthless in today's inflated world, but if it could talk, what grand stories it could tell. It is all about size and texture and very rarely do you notice the imprinted markings. Only one in a hundred people would notice a poetic inscription in lieu of a Royal head. Our coin had two sides to it is being. One side had a story so powerful, and so Australian, that it brings into question many of the issues that trouble us today. The Aboriginal on this coin is Gwoya Jungarai. He was the survivor of an Aboriginal massacre. His people captured his image in art. With his long flowing beard and a powerful chest crossed with tribal scars, he is a man standing proud beneath the Southern Cross. He is our man on our two-dollar coin. The flip side came out blank, the Queen of England, a distant country, was missing. The inscription on this side, 'love is a currency, spend it wisely,' would only be found by a few, and the connections within their lives would relate to the words. Apart from the written word, the author called (C) has a voice, via the coin as it changes hands. Who better to comment on this epic journey?