1. Finishing the Nightmares Trilogy with the publication of Afterlife of Alanna Miller on 15th January
2. Publishing books 4 and 5 of the Mel Goes to Hell series on 1st February and 26 March, respectively.
3. Writing book 6 of the Mel Goes to Hell series before the end of 2015.
4. Finishing and publishing the rest of the Turbulence and Triumph series in 2015.
5. Writing and publishing Ocean’s Depths, the third book in the Ocean’s Gift series, in 2015.
6. Writing Ocean’s Legend, the fourth book in the Ocean’s Gift series, in 2015.
7. Start and publish the first three books of a new, mystery project I’m working on. I’ll reveal more details on this as they come available.
8. Write another 400,000 words in 2015.
9. Attend RWDU15 in March and NOT hide under the table.
10. Double that 50,000 books to 100,000 by the end of 2015.

So…what did I do?

The Nightmares Trilogy is complete – Afterlife released in January.

The Mel Goes to Hell series did get those two new books published – but #6 isn't finished yet.

The Turbulence and Triumph series got FOUR new books…but it's not finished yet, so Ocean's Depths and Ocean's Legend will have to wait for another year.

My new mystery project…was the Romance Island Resort series. Book 3, The Rock Star's Virginity, released on 3rd December.

My word count for the year is just under 300,000 words. Not as high as I'd planned, but I'm happy with the count as it stands.

I met so many awesome authors and readers at RWDU 15 that I agreed to go back in 2016.

Oh…that 50k figure. It's funny – I actually hit the 100k target at the end of January 2015. Based on my December figures, I've now sold over 300,000 books – which means I've sold over a quarter of a million books in 2015. You could say it's been a good year 😀

In addition, I won an award – Maid for the Rock Star won a Watty Award from Wattpad.

Some of you may know that I spent time in hospital in 2015 – and my recovery's been slow. However, I'm lucky to be alive and I'm very grateful for that. I'm happy to be able to add that I survived 2015 as one of my achievements for the year.

Okay, actually, it's been an awesome year. And 2016 looks to be even better.

Want to know what I have planned for 2016?

1. Finish the Romance Island Resort series.
2. Finish the Mel Goes to Hell series.
3. Finish the Turbulence and Triumph series.
4. Release some of my titles as audiobooks.
5. Write another 300,000 words.
6. Sell another 300,000 books.

It's a shorter list than the one for 2015, but it's no less ambitious – my writing and publishing schedule has ten new books on it for 2016.

I couldn't have achieved half of what I have this year without your help – my fellow authors, readers, bloggers and reviewers – so a big THANK YOU to all of you for all your help with everything throughout the year.

I'd really like to ask for your help in 2016, too – because I won't reach all of my goals without it.

Please:

1. Spread the word. If you enjoyed my books, or a new one caught your eye and your interest, tell someone about it. Hell – post about it on Facebook or Twitter, and tell everyone.
2. Leave a review. If you liked a book, leave a quick review. It doesn't have to be an essay on the finer points of the book – just a star rating and a (non-spoiler) description of your favourite bit of the book.
3. Encourage me to continue. Every time I see a new review or email or post about how someone liked my book, it's encouragement to write the next book, because I know someone's eagerly awaiting it.

Thank you again…and I hope your 2016 shapes up to be even better than 2015.

If you're going to stow away on a ship, make sure it's one with modern facilities and a minimum of rats.

Maria in Ocean's Trial didn't have time to check the facilities or the rat population when she sneaked aboard the TSS Islander in Fremantle, but perhaps she should have. Perhaps she would have tried a bit harder to pay her passage instead.

TSS Islander

Build in Grangemouth Dockyard in Scotland, the Turbine Steam Ship (TSS) Islander was commissioned by the Christmas Island Phosphate Company as the supply vessel for their Christmas Island operations. She was built to carry both cargo and passengers, to the tune of 1598 tons, and withstand tropical climates.

The TSS Islander was actually the Islander III – the Islander II was renamed Moni when the TSS Islander came into service in 1929. I have no idea what happened to the Islander I.

In Flying Fish Cove, the only safe anchorage at Christmas Island, there was a triangular pier known variously as the Islander Jetty, the Triangular Jetty or the Japanese Pier, as the Japanese guano vessels used this jetty, too.

This pier was damaged when a Japanese guano vessel, Nissei Maru, moored there in 1943 exploded and sank under mysterious circumstances. The island was occupied by Japanese forces at the time, so the ship is reputed to have been sunk by either an Allied submarine or saboteurs among the mining personnel, who were loading the vessel at the time of the incident. A storm in 1951 did even more damage to the jetty and it was demolished soon after.

Despite having a dedicated pier for the Islander, sometimes cargo and passengers had to be winched up the cliffs at Waterfall, when weather and wave conditions in Flying Fish Cove were unfavourable.

Luckily for Maria, when she arrived at Christmas Island, the ship was unloaded at the Triangular Jetty in Flying Fish Cove…though I don't think she ever had any intention of taking the winch cage up the cliffs.

Christmas Island is no stranger to tropical storms and cyclones. A cyclone passes within 100km of the island every year or two during the summer cyclone season. They rarely do much damage, but there are exceptions.

On 1 January 1932, a particularly strong cyclone hit Christmas Island. The normally calm Flying Fish Cove bore the brunt of it.

First, the raging swell came into the cove. Calm water became a raging maelstrom, washing clean over the top of the loading piers.

On the 2nd January, the storm only got worse.

The combination of incessant rain and pounding waves ate away at the Kampong main road until it washed away entirely.

By noon, the swell had grown so huge that the waves topped the entire loading area, including the oil tanks.

The waves were so strong that they demolished most of the No 2 loading pier and smashed the loading sheds into kindling.

As the waves kept on coming, they carried debris as high as the treeline, littering Flying Fish Cove with the remains of the island's precious infrastructure.

But there was worse to come.

For days, the torrential rain had been softening up the soil at the top of the cliffs above the Kampong. By the early hours of the morning of the 3rd of January, they were completely saturated. The cliffs gave way in a massive landslide that picked up trees and boulders, engulfing and destroying most of the Malay Kampong below.

By some miracle, there were no casualties, and William Browning Jackson, then the Island Manager and Tuan, opened his house to the homeless Malay women and children. His wife and children played host to 22 unexpected houseguests while Jackson and the Malay men salvaged what they could from their buried former homes.

So when you're reading Ocean's Widow…no, I didn't make the storm up, nor its aftermath.

Flying Fish Cove – the only safe anchorage at Christmas Island and even then conditions can change in a moment, as a huge swell rolls into the usually calm cove.

Hardly a true cove, it's one of the few places where there's a beach on Christmas Island and the curved bay faces north west, making it sheltered for most of the time, except when a cyclone's coming in.

There are a number of shipwrecks associated with Christmas Island, with the majority of these either during the conflict in World War II or as a result of asylum seeker vessels arriving from Indonesia. Those that didn't sink in Flying Fish Cove would have been headed there.

Yet it's also where Settlement is – the town named by the very original, practical miners, managers and engineers who built it from 1888. Stretching from the edges of the cove itself right up to Rocky Point, the oldest houses on the island are there.

And why are Christmas Island and Flying Fish Cove so important? It's the setting for the third book in my Turbulence and Triumph series, Ocean's Triumph.

There is a dragon at Christmas Island. No, not a lizard or a water dragon – a huge, mythical beast with its own cave. A grotto, in fact.

Now, when I say it's a legend, it's a fairly young legend. People have only been living at Christmas Island since the 1880s. Occasionally ships would stop there for water, food or other supplies, but it's a forbidding rock in the Indian Ocean and not exactly a well-known tourist destination.

Yet the dragon…is a lost tourist who stayed.

The Grotto

As you drive out of the Settlement toward Waterfall and the golf course, there's a sign pointing into the jungle that says, “The Grotto”. There are a couple of bays by each side of the road where you can park your car and that's about it. In William McGregor's time, there wouldn't even have been that – just a muddy track churned up by his motorcycle from daily trips to Waterfall.

Feeling a bit silly, I parked my rental four-wheel-drive (a battered Toyota RAV4, if you absolutely need to know) in the bay and followed the arrow on the sign.

I expected to see some of the nice signs like you find in the National Park, on the other side of the island, telling me how unique and wonderful the Grotto is. Instead, I was freaked out by a lovely yellow sign telling me to “Proceed with caution”. That's when the dark clouds overhead opened up and dumped a downpour on my head, just in case I didn't get the message.

On the other side of the rough clearing in the jungle that marked my path, there was another, equally cheery sign. I mean, nothing welcomes tourists like a lichen-encrusted sign saying:

DANGER
ENTRY PROHIBITED
ENTER AT OWN RISK

Especially as I'm there on my own with no mobile phone access. But my guidebook said the Grotto was lovely and I really should see it…

The rain stopped as quickly as it had started and I could now see my path ahead. It looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie – the local crabs having a party while they wait for the main meal to show up. While not the biggest crabs on the island, every one of them was bigger than my sneakered foot. And not afraid of me in the slightest.

I scuttled like the locals, hoping they'd ignore me, and a very short walk brought me up short at a rugged rock with a glimpse of water underneath, a couple metres down. I'd found The Grotto.

Here There Be Dragons

My dog-eared and downpour-dampened guidebook told me the Grotto was the home of a Chinese dragon. Around a century ago, he (she? it?) swam all the way from China, but became lost in the Indian Ocean. He was exhausted by the time he reached Christmas Island, but he heard voices speaking Chinese, so he desperately tried to find a way ashore. Time and time again he tried, only to meet more waves and cliffs barring his way.

Eventually, the exhausted dragon found a cave that led up under the island. He kept swimming upward until he emerged in the Grotto.

When he had recovered, he climbed up over the entrance to the Grotto, where he can still be seen today. The sound of him roaring in the caves welcomes or warns visitors, depending on the weather. Or his mood.

On the day I visited, Cyclone Iggy was just offshore of the island, and the ten metre swell in Flying Fish Cove looked every bit as bad as the photos of the 1932 storm that carried away the loading pier. So the Grotto dragon was deep inside the cave, roaring a warning to anyone crazy enough to be out in the weather. Yes, including me.

So, how does the Christmas Island dragon in the Grotto have anything to do with me or mermaids? Well…Ocean's Triumph is set at Christmas Island and some of the scenes take place in the Grotto. And what's the difference between a mermaid and a water dragon, really? I mean, it could have been a dragon roaring…or a mermaid burping…who knows?

After a long time at sea, Christmas Island's dark cliffs loom out of the Indian Ocean like some sort of monster. Whether you arrive by air or sea, those forbidding bastions definitely don't make you feel welcome.

Most histories of Christmas Island mention discovery in the 1600s, with the island being given its present name at Christmas in 1643. William Dampier visited the place in 1688 and caught some robber crabs to tide the crew over until they reached Batavia or another suitable ports. The island seems to have been a very secretive, lonely place, uninhabited by humans until exploration and settlement in the 1870s. Phosphate mining began at Christmas Island in the 1890s.

An Australian territory since 1958, Christmas Island is 2650 km north west of Perth. Christmas Island is surrounded by cliffs around 20 m high, broken by several small beaches around its perimeter.

With a permanent population of approximately 1300 people, the island has a temporary population which can vary considerably, due to staff and inmates at the Immigration Detention Centre. Locals and guidebooks describe the island as the crabbiest place on earth, which is not a reference to the general disposition of the human population but the estimated crustacean population of 20 million crabs of various species. The red land crabs migrate to the ocean en masse in November or December each year, providing a unique sight for tourists.

The crab population did not appear to daunt the earliest settlers, nor do the risks associated with travel to Christmas Island deter visitors.

Least of all Maria in my Turbulence and Triumph series, as Ocean's Triumph is set at Christmas Island in the 1930s.

The South Beach Hydrodome was THE place to be seen. Tearooms, beach and swimming baths; a dedicated tram service to take you there…even shark netting to keep uninvited guests out.

Opened in 1923, the Hydrodome was definitely a feature of Fremantle life in the 1920s, so setting my historical fiction series there meant I had to include it. How could Maria live in Fremantle and NOT visit South Beach? According to ads at the time, there were no sad sea waves, flies or sharks. Not that she minded sharks…

South Beach

South Beach was a preferred swimming and recreation spot from the beginning of the twentieth century. A tramline was constructed from Fremantle to South Beach, which opened in 1905.

South Beach was officially declared “open” for public recreation by the Governor Sir Gerald Strickland on 15 November 1909 and gazetted as a reserve for public recreation in January 1910. Over 35,000 people attended the opening ceremonies – possibly most of Perth and Fremantle's population at the time.

Construction

The Fremantle Municipal Council erected a jetty at South Beach in 1916 with assistance from officers of the Public Works Department, but at the end of World War I, more ambitious plans were in progress – for a building with dressing-sheds on the ground floor and a tearoom and halls upstairs. The Council advertised for designs and the winning design was developed by Mr A E Atkinson of Inglewood. The cost for construction? A cool £3000.

When it was opened in 1923, the Hydrodome wasn't yet complete – but it was open in more ways than one.

Place of Pleasure

Once complete, Hydrodome hall played host to big jazz bands and dances.

The swimming baths were constructed to include a jetty…

…and shark netting, though the first set of shark netting was carried away in a storm.

Jetties and proper swimming baths were constructed by 1929, so by the time Tony and Maria travelled there for their evening's entertainment, it was a far cry from the basic facilities that would have existed when she arrived in 1923.

Down With the Dome

Nothing lasts forever – not even the Hydrodome. A severe storm in the 1950s damaged the upper level of the Hydrodome so badly that the whole structure was demolished soon after.

Ocean swimming baths gave way to aquatic centres and the only beach in Perth that's likely to see 35,000 people in a day now is Cottesloe Beach to the north.

Yes, I did go to great lengths to research my Siren of War series – but that's the point of historical fiction and historical romance. Getting the details right so the story flows effortlessly.

So which was the first battle? How did World War I spill into Australian territory? Who won? And at what cost?

Now, I put this together in a video – complete with contemporary photos – so if you'd like to watch instead of read, be my guest:

I must apologise – my voice got a little teary at the end of this video. How could I not? It was war and victory came at the cost of men's lives.

To War

1914. The start of World War I. Thirty thousand eager young Australian and New Zealand men volunteered to join the army, so they could fight for Britain. Both countries' fleets assembled in Albany, Western Australia – 38 troop transports escorted by five warships across the Indian Ocean to Egypt, so the new troops could begin their training. It was to be the war to end all wars and they wanted a part of it. They had no idea that a third of them wouldn't survive the year – with more than ten thousand men dying in Gallipoli alone.

The protagonist in today's tale is called Sydney. One of the escort ships was the HMAS Sydney, a Chatham Class light cruiser commanded by Captain John Glossop. Launched in 1912 and encased in 3 inch thick armour, she carried 8 6-inch guns, 4 3-pounder guns and 2 21-inch torpedo tubes – more than enough to be quite a formidable force on the water.

Accidental Conquest

The setting for this battle is Cocos – the Cocos Keeling Islands. Two remote coral atolls in the Indian Ocean that were annexed by the British crown BY ACCIDENT in 1857. How can territory be claimed by accident? I'll tell you, for it was.

Captain Stephen Fremantle, the brother of the man the port city of Fremantle is named for, received orders from Britain in January 1857 to take possession of the Cocos Islands in the name of the British crown. While there are plenty of islands called Cocos, there was only one set of Cocos Islands where he had any authority and it was the Cocos Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean, so he set sail for the atoll in the HMS Juno. On 31 March, 1857, he planted the flag and named John Clunies-Ross the governor of the island group, before sailing back to Sydney. It wasn't until he arrived back in Sydney that he found out that his vague instructions had been referring to some other islands in the Bay of Bengal – which, coincidentally, were already British territory.

Rather than admit their mistake, the British government decided to keep the Cocos Keeling Islands, particularly when they were identified as the perfect place for a cable station for the subsea telegraph cable spanning the Indian Ocean. The cable station was built on Direction Island in 1901, connecting South Africa via Mauritius to Cottesloe, Western Australia. A cable was also laid from Cocos to the city of Batavia (now Jakarta) which then linked to Darwin in northern Australia.

Cocos Cable Station

As such a strategic communications hub, the staff at the Cocos telegraph station heard all the news.

They knew how valuable Direction Island was and, when stories of a new warship in the Indian Ocean began to circulate, it was only a matter of time before they were its next target. They kept a lookout, ready to radio and telegraph for help as soon as an enemy vessel was sighted.

What was their biggest fear? The scourge of the Allied navies, part of the German East Asiatic Squadron – the Dresden class light cruiser, SS Emden. She steamed into the Indian Ocean in August 1914. In less than two months, she sank or captured 21 vessels, including a coal ship called the Buresk. By November 1914, at least nine Allied vessels were hunting the Emden – but they found no trace of her, aside from the damage she left in her wake.

This one German cruiser was the reason for the troop transports' heavy escort from Albany, when the convoy of ships left on 1st November 1914.

Yes, the whole Indian Ocean was afraid of one ship.

First Sign of Danger

At 6 am on 9 November 1914, a ship was spotted offshore from Direction Island. At first glance, it had four funnels, like a merchant ship or an Allied vessel, but she didn’t have a flag. The cable staff radioed for help, saying that there was a strange ship in the lagoon entrance.

As the sun rose and the ship moved closer, it became clear that one of the funnels was false. A strange ship with three funnels, pretending it had more?

There was only one ship it could be. The SS Emden.

The cable station staff raced to radio for help again, to anyone who could hear them, that the Emden had arrived at Direction Island, but the Emden jammed their radio signals before they received any reply.

A Polite Attack

A landing party from the Emden was sent ashore to Direction Island in a steam launch. There were 50 men: 30 seamen, 15 technical staff and two wireless men, commanded by Hellmuth Von Mücke and two lieutenants. Two cables were cut with axes and cold chisels; one was the cable to Perth, the other a spare length of cable. The cable crew told Von Mücke that he had been awarded the Iron Cross – the first news he'd heard of it. His response was to tell them that they wouldn’t be harmed.

It may have been war, but it was a very polite sort of attack.

The German landing party cut down the wireless mast – then carefully lowered it down between the tennis courts so the courts wouldn't be damaged. They smashed the relay station machinery but not the generator because it also powered the ice plant.

Where was help when they needed it most?

The ANZAC Convoy

While the cable station equipment was being systematically smashed, help wasn't far away. The entire Australian and New Zealand convoy was sixty miles from Cocos – and the HMAS Sydney received the radio distress call, as well as the Emden‘s jamming signal. They were ordered to steam off at full speed to investigate – the crew could have breakfast on the way.

The Sydney covered the distance in just over three hours, sighting the Emden off Direction Island at 9.15 am. When the Emden recognised the Australian light cruiser, she headed into open sea, stranding her landing party on Direction Island.

Open Fire

The Emden fired first, so the Sydney opened fire. A broadside from the Sydney scored them a direct hit on the Emden, before another shot from the Emden took out the Sydney‘s rangefinder and the man operating it, cutting another man's leg off at the knee. Maybe a minute later, a shrapnel shell burst on deck – injuring 7 of a gun crew of 9. Two of the men died.

A piece from another shell went straight through a man's body – and he died of his wounds, two days later. His name was Reginald Albert Sharpe.

When the two ships opened fire, the Emden‘s marooned landing party and the cable station staff settled in to enjoy the show – from the best vantage point they could find, the cable station roof.

The Emden hit the Sydney‘s control room next – wounding the control officer, while another man lost an eye.

It wasn't until 10am that the Sydney managed to land a significant hit on the Emden – and the resulting explosion set fire to the ship. At 10.30, they managed to shoot out the foremast, followed by the second funnel, not ten minutes later. A lucky shot found the Emden‘s boilers and caused another explosion.

At 11am, with three funnels gone and both the bridge and charthouse blown off, the Emden started sinking. Captain Karl Muller set a course for the nearest land – North Keeling Island, running her aground on the surrounding reef fifteen minutes later.

A New Threat

Her opponent disabled, the Sydney found a new target on the horizon – a collier, the Buresk, that had been attacked and captured by the Emden in an earlier battle.

The Buresk was a coal ship and the German prize crew didn't want the coal falling into enemy hands, so they scuttled it, opening the sea-cocks and smashing the spindles so they couldn't be closed. The armed boarding party sent by the Sydney discovered this when they heard it from the ship's Chinese crew, hustling everyone back to the Sydney. The Sydney fired four shots into the Buresk – she sank, still burning.

HMAS Sydney returned to the Emden at 4 in the afternoon, to find her still flying the German Naval Ensign flag. Not wanting to fire on an already disabled vessel, the Sydney asked the Emden three times to surrender – signalling with semaphore flags – but she got no answer and the German flag still flew.

The Sydney fired one final shot into the Emden and received a response. The German flag was hauled down and a white one waved.

Rescue

The Sydney sent a lifeboat the Emden, manned by the Buresk‘s German crew, carrying water supplies and a message that they'd return to rescue them in the morning.

They then headed out to sea – to pick up three men they'd seen swimming in the water. The poor men had been swimming since 10.30 that morning but the Sydney reports picking up all three of them at 5pm.

The Sydney stayed offshore overnight, as they'd heard (from one of the prisoners, I imagine) that the German landing party on Direction Island were heavily armed and they didn't want to engage them until daylight.

Daylight

When daylight came, they assembled a landing party of 35 men and the officers to go ashore. They were met on the jetty by the cable station staff – no one else.

The German landing party, under the able command of von Mucke, had turned pirate. When neither the Emden nor the Sydney returned, they assumed the worst and decided to find their own way home. The commandeered supplies of food and water from Direction Island and loaded them into the boats, eyeing off the Governor's schooner, Ayesha. Telling the cable station staff they were headed for East Africa, they sailed away in the Ayesha before the Sydney returned.

The Sydney asked for help from the cable station's surgeon and he accompanied them back to North Keeling to assist with the wounded men on the Emden. It took a whole day to transfer everyone from the Emden to the Sydney and the conditions were pretty crowded when they were done. While the majority of the Emden crew weren't allowed weapons, for some reason the officers were permitted to keep their swords.

One of the Sydney crew, Leading Signalman John Seabrook, described the damage to the Emden in detail:

“The floor of the conning tower was blown up. The chart house and upper bridge were missing, only the deck of the lower bridge remaining. The foremast was hanging over the port side. The three funnels were laying over the port side – tired I presume – there were big holes all round the decks.

“Where the funnels and engine room had been was one mass of bent and twisted iron. From the mainmast to right aft, there was no woodwork left – not even the wood of the decks. The fire had burnt the lot. The after guns were blistered beyond recognition. All the officers' cabins were burnt out and it was a straight drop from the deck to the bottom of the ship.”

On the Emden, 134 died and 65 were wounded; on the Sydney, there were 4 dead and 17 wounded.

The German dead were buried at North Keeling Island – the bodies were later exhumed and transported back to Germany.

Three of the Sydney dead were buried at sea.

Crabs

Around twenty of the Emden‘s wounded had managed to get ashore on North Keeling Island, which turned out to be a terrible idea. The wounded men had been attacked by the large land crabs on the island. In case you're wondering what sort of crab attacks a man – I'll introduce you to the land crabs on Cocos. The smaller ones – about the size of two spread hands – are aptly named Cardisoma carnifex. Carnifex means butcher. The bigger ones…well, they're the same size as the tyres on a four wheel drive and they're called robber or coconut crabs. Their claws can break through a coconut shell.

The wounded men on the island had to wait 'til the following morning to be rescued from the marauding crabs, but they were, and the Sydney headed to Colombo in Sri Lanka with their prisoners.

They were met and congratulated by some of the New Zealand convoy ships, which were joined by the remainder of the convoy as the week progressed. She resumed normal duty – escorting the convoy to Aden, as originally planned.

Aftermath

For the damaged cable station, help was soon at hand. On 16 November 1914 the cable ship Patrol arrived with repair gear and provisions to replace what was damaged or taken by the Emden raiders. The cable station was operational a week after the attack.

The German landing party in the Ayesha never made it to East Africa – though they never tried to, either. Instead, when they left Cocos, they sailed for Padang in Sumatra. They transferred to a German freighter that took them to Yemen, before making their way over land to Constantinople and then on to Germany. It took them six months. Von Mucke wrote two bestselling books about his experiences on the Emden and his journey after it sank.

The Emden was slowly picked apart by salvage crews from Cocos and Japan, until January 1916, when the Emden started slipping back off the reef into deeper water until she was no longer visible from shore. She still lies there today.

If you ask any Australian today about the HMAS Sydney sinking a German ship in the Indian Ocean, most would be thinking about the World War II vessel, the HMAS Sydney II. But the only part of the original Sydney that took part in the 1941 battle was the ship's solid silver bell – it was lost with the HMAS Sydney II when she sank with all hands off the coast of Western Australia in November 1941, after disabling the German vessel Kormoran, which was also wrecked in the same engagement.

All of the historic photos used in this post were taken before or during World War 1 – including many that were taken on the day of the battle or during subsequent rescue operations – and were sourced from the Australian War Memorial, the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Western Australia.

The Battle of Cocos was the Royal Australian Navy's first victory at sea, but it still came at quite a cost – loss of life from both sides. Lest we forget.

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Merry and Maria lived on Tuckfield Street, which is (and was) a real road in Fremantle, Western Australia. If you're trying to place everything in Ocean's Trial, I can make it easier for you with a contemporary map. This is dated 1919, four years before Maria arrived in Fremantle, but it's the closest I've been able to find. If you find this version a bit small, you can click on the image to see the full sized map.

Fishing in Fremantle

Now the fishing industry in Western Australia started soon after European colonists arrived. Fish were plentiful around the reefs and rocks at the mouth of Fremantle Harbour and the migrant fishermen were happy to exploit this natural resource.

While there were some English migrant fishermen, the industry was predominantly in the hands of migrants from Italy. They slept on their boats, worked hard and sold their fish at a good price – so it's no wonder that when you look back at the names of Western Australian fishermen in the early 1900s, most of them are Italian.

The Boats

Fishing boats were sail and steam – often with a well in the middle, filled with seawater, so the catch could be kept alive for a bit longer so they'd still be fresh when the fishermen brought their catch ashore.

The Fish Market

South of Fremantle Harbour is the Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour – it was in 1923 and still is the case today.

In 1923, though, the Fremantle Fish Market was in the buildings at the end of the jetty where the fish were landed. Sheltered by a sea wall, the fish market operated here until 1928, when it was moved to where Kailis now sells fish and chips to tourists (and researchers).

Today

Well, prices have increased considerably since Kailis opened its doors in 1928, but they still have a fish market where you can purchase fresh-caught fish on ice.

The fishing fleet still ties up here, but the ships are bigger than ever before.

The fishermen who brought their catch ashore in baskets now only use baskets to catch rock lobsters – though, more often than not, they use modern batten pots instead.

And between the modern restaurants selling seafood and even fish and chip ice cream, where the old jetty and fish market once stood is a memorial – to the fishermen of Fremantle.

Yes, I did go to great lengths to research my Turbulence and Triumph series – but that's the point of historical fiction and historical romance. Getting the details right so the story flows effortlessly.