Estelle Pinney, author of 4 previous novels, is profiled by Lou Robson in "The Courier Mail" as her fifth, Burnt Sunshine, is about to be published by Penguin.
As a 38-year-old divorcee selling cosmetics at David Jones, she decided she wanted another career change -- to be a writer. She joined a writers' group, which would later become the Fellowship of Australian Writers, and surrounded herself with authors. "I wanted to write the great Australian novel and needed a suitable subject," she said. "I decided Frank Jardine was worth researching and set about to do just that." In 1864 the explorer Frank Jardine and his brother Alexander had travelled from Rockhampton to Somerset, north of Bamaga on Cape York. Jardine completed the 1930km journey with a reputation as a tyrant and killer who reportedly shot more than 100 Aborigines. He later married a Samoan princess and went on to become Somerset police magistrate, before dying of leprosy in 1919.If marrying a Samoan princess wasn't enough, surely the death from leprosy tops it all.
