Paula Xiberras
As the title suggests it’s another novel from Peter Watt, the former Tasmanian resident and master storyteller. A man of many trades Peter has been a soldier, a clerk and a police sergeant among a varied career history. He also speaks Vietnamese and Pidgin; add to that his present career of professional writer and his work as a volunteer fire-fighter in rural Queensland and you have a picture of a multi-skilled man. Peter is back with another enthralling instalment in his Duffy/Macintosh series. ‘Beyond the Horizon’ is very much a page turner but it is the product of a writer with a thorough knowledge of history that is novelising both the famous and the more obscure moments of history.
Peter Watt can’t speak more highly or say enough good things about his one-time home of Tasmania. The internationally famous author chats to me about his time as a resident in Tasmania ;( he lived in Tassie for 3 years while he studied at the University of Tasmania). It was his history course taught by the inspirational teacher Michael Roe that set him on the course of his history obsession and his career as an author in the tradition of Wilbur Smith that both educates and entertains, that catalogues and brings history to life in an exceptionally readable and enjoyable way.
It is letters, like that from a plumber, who told Peter that his were the only books he could read, that delight him and make him see his role a rewarding one and make him a great ambassador for the ‘Get Reading’ campaign during which he visited Tasmania for a number of events, speaking at libraries up north and down south. This visit to Tassie is one he makes too seldom and also allowed him time to catch up with friends and maybe thank Michael Roe once again for being the inspiration he has been to Peter’s bringing history to life.
Like a lot of best-selling and popular authors, unfortunately Peter has had some negative comments from people who consider his popular brand of writing as not literary enough and he has even had someone at a literary conference say to him that ‘you don’t deserve to be here’. Further, he has had difficulty getting the mainstream media to talk about his books as they do not believe his image is ’young enough’.
Peter researches his history meticulously and has even discovered some little known facts such as the reason why some war memorials display the dates 1915 to 1919. It is a little known fact that Australian soldiers fought in the Bolshevik war and that two crosses were awarded to them, but because they were representing the British army at the time the Brits are desirous of these crosses.
He also documents the case we might not be familiar with of the influenza epidemic which hit Australia post Great War. It is believed the returning soldiers with weakened immune systems brought the disease back home with them and so the influenza is seen, Peter says, as ‘nature’s extension of the great war’ and ironically in a cruel twist killed some of those at home, the very people who soldiers had sought to fight for.
Unlike many authors Peter doesn’t necessarily need to travel to all the sites he sets his novels in but finds study and research more than compensates, and is in fact often preferable as he is writing about historical time periods and experiencing an area as it was then and not how it looks now.
Peter’s novels want to ensure we do not forget the sacrifice our armed services made and continue to make for us.
‘Beyond The Horizon’ is out now.
