The Shorthand Writer

by V. Parker Kennedy

Overview

1957, United Kingdom.

Jane Frobisher crossed the world at eighteen years of age intending to ‘visit strange places and meet interesting people.’ Jane was a shorthand writer, an indispensable occupation in the 20th century. An opportunity to travel came in the form of a joint United Kingdom and Australian emigration programme enabling Jane to emigrate for the princely sum of five pounds. Following an extraordinary journey by sea and rail, it was an isolated mining town in outback Queensland that would interrupt her travels.

The treatment of women in and out of the court system, the dangers of isolation, plus the discovery of hundred-year-old skeletal remains enhances and supports the narrative. The effects of extreme weather conditions, including suffocating heat, an engulfing bedourie (dust storm) and the constant allure and fascination of a running river in desert country form a backdrop to the daily lives of the stalwarts who live in the outback.

While working as a shorthand writer in industry, law and commerce, plus assisting an author who wrote the defining history of the nation, Jane married, gave birth to an autistic child and ultimately divorced. But it was a Russian émigré, an Aboriginal woman and a bi-racial man who were to define her interesting if not challenging life.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163409617
Publisher:	Tellwell Talent
Publication date:	12/05/2019
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

I was eighteen years old when I arrived in the north west Queensland mining town of Mount Isa, two days before Christmas, 1957 - an emigrant from the English Midland city of Birmingham. I fell in love with the township with the eclectic gathering of nationalities, all endeavouring to earn a living in that outback town full of opportunities.

I married in Mount Isa and produced four children all born in Brisbane, now scattered around this great nation, while I currently live and write in the island state of Tasmania. I love the sheer delight of writing, but most of all, having the essential time to write.

Having worked all my life as a shorthand writer, a skill no longer in demand, I wanted to write about the eclectic situations that demanded this skill during the last century. We were in such demand and could earn our living anywhere in the English speaking world.

The best part of my day is when I sit at the computer in my library shortly after dawn. I switch off the phone and only check the calls at the end of my working day. Living alone, I’m able to ensure that writing forms part of almost every day and I’m fully aware that it’s bordering on an obsession. I publish under V Parker Kennedy

My first book, “One Corner of an Ancient Land” was published in 2017 – an anthology detailing the lives, hopes and dreams of those intrepid settlers who opened up the land beyond the Selwyn Ranges in north- west Queensland. “The Shorthand Writer” is my second book, also set in north-west Queensland. During the lockdown I published a wartime romance entitled "The Owl and the Pussycat" under Val Kennedy. My latest publication is an anthology called “Century of Conflict”, beginning with the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and ending with an explosion in Paris at midnight 2000. There are twelve stories, including the two world wars, women's suffrage, the troubles in Ireland and the disappearance of aboriginal women in Canada.

I'm currently working on a novel set in the heady days of the burgeoning city of Mount Isa in the nineteen fifties. It's a murder mystery in a town believed to have housed over fifty different nationalities. It was a town of big money, sporting clubs and an over abundance of alcohol. It wasn't without its problems, especially between the soccer teams of Serbia and Croatia, not forgetting the underlying problems with the Brits and Germans.