Just for a moment, imagine you are me.

You are thirty-four-years-old, and your widowed mother died last year. Then a close relative gives you something that offers you a personal glimpse into what mum, dad and older sister did just a few years before you were born. They emigrated to Australia. How would that affect you?

Would you want to go and see Australia yourself, and trace those family footsteps?

Well, I would.

And I did – but it took me another thirty-three years…

By March 2020 I had reached a position when I felt ready to put normal life aside for almost a month and make that long-awaited pilgrimage. I'd already done some meticulous research, and the result of that is self-evident in another book of mine. What's more, I wasn't going on my own. My wife had struck a deal in similar fashion to that done by my mother in 1946: while mum insisted on taking a sideboard with her, Elaine wanted to do more than wallow in South Australian family history – she insisted on including a trip to Sydney as well, just to do the touristy stuff. All went well until the world trembled under the growing threat of a pandemic, and our plans began to come adrift…

…and then, of course, there was The Jackaroo!

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