You know I love a good cup of tea, right? I mean a REAL cup of tea; made with tea leaves. I cannot disclose what goes through my mind when a café serves up a cup with a small brand label on a piece of string hanging over the edge and charges ‘coffee’ prices for it. Grrrr!

In my first Dusty Kent Mystery (Murder in Murloo) Dusty’s long-time family friend Guiseppe Di Stefano made tea for her in a china teapot ‘real tea; no teabags’. Pots of tea followed Dusty around Murloo in her quest to track down the cold-blooded killer of 27-year-old Gabby Peters.

Apart from ‘proper’ tea, another interesting feature of Murloo was its eccentric characters from ‘Dame Edna’, a ‘robust septuagenarian’ whose ‘fruit cake would be ideal for disguising the distinct odour of arsenic’ to Jock Campbell, who once landed his light plane ‘on the top of an old barn full of hay’.

The seaside village of Murloo is based on the actual village of Marlo in East Gippsland where I grew up, an area well-endowed with eccentric characters. One of these real-life eccentrics was Ben Buckley. Like my fictional character, Ben was the pilot of an ultra-light plane; a larrikin pilot who executed perfect landings in paddocks, on football ovals during training and even flew low under the Snowy River Bridge at Orbost (my hometown).

But perhaps Ben Buckley’s most eccentric act was to repurpose the cut-off strings from used teabags to make unbreakable ropes. And then to establish an annual teabag rope tug of war! ‘Five big footballers against five big shearers and they couldn’t break it,’ he declared at the 2019 Omeo and District Agricultural Show.

Now, I think we all need a nice hot cup of tea. (As Gabby’s mother said to Dusty in Murder in Murloo at the barbecue honouring her daughter’s memory.)

Ciao Team Dusty!

Spring has arrived in Australia. Such joy! Bunches of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and sweet peas adorn the city flower stalls. Fluffy golden blossoms festoon wattle trees everywhere. In the Yarra Valley, enchanting avenues of cherry blossoms attract many visitors. Through my wall-wide windows I watch the wattlebird hopping along my balcony rail.

The balcony bathed in spring sunshine invites me to ... Continue Reading

I’m talking trams again! From a 15-year-old tram driver in my last post to a royal tram driver in this post. The year after the teenager hijacked a tram, a famous Royal took a Melbourne tram for a ride. Mary Donaldson did not have to resort to hijacking; the restored SW6 class tram number 965 that she drove was a wedding gift from the people of Victoria to her and her husband, HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The Danish royal couple drove the tram from the Danish Tramway Museum depot to the terminus. Now, this Melbourne tram, blessed by royalty, brings delight to visitors of the Danish Tramway Museum (Sporvejsmuseet Skjoldenæsholm).

In 2018 another royal couple rode on a Melbourne tram. This time it was the English royals Prince Harry and Meghan Markle who took the number one tram to South Melbourne Beach. Dusty commented on this in Murder on a Melbourne Tram when the ‘green and yellow tram carrying commuters to their city offices rattled along the tracks’ in front of Villa Depaul, a luxury chateau in a five-hectare landscaped park, where she and Sean were staying.

And then there’s Rock and Roll Royalty. Melbournians will be aware of a world-famous music legend who was also besotted with our trams. So taken was Elton John that during a visit to Melbourne in 1983 he bought one of the iconic W-class trams, had it shipped to the UK and installed it in his garden at his estate in Berkshire.

Our trams are much-loved. Songs have even been written about individual Melbourne trams, Danes love the Melbourne trams, Bill Bailey’s eyes light up at the sight of a Melbourne tram and Brigid George wrote a book called Murder on a Melbourne Tram. All aboard the Melbourne tram!

Image: SW6 number 965 on its first test run in the snow at the Danish Tramway Museum, February 2006. Photograph courtesy Morton E. Storgaard. Reprinted with kind permission from Mikael Lund, Chairman of the Danish Tramway Museum. Thanks also to Warren Doubleday, Collections Manager, Melbourne Tram Museum Inc.

I wrote Murder on a Melbourne Tram during the Covid years when we were restricted in our movements. It became the first Dusty Kent novel where I did not travel to the setting. I was already here in Melbourne and a regular tram traveller.

We love our trams here in Melbourne. Some love them even more than others. For example, in April 2005 a 15-year-old boy was so besotted with trams that he hopped in the driver seat of a C-class in the South Melbourne depot and off he went; past Luna Park in St Kilda, through Malvern and Kooyong and up along Glenferrie Road.

Amazingly, along the way, he stopped to pick up and set down passengers. His passengers were blissfully unaware that their tram was being driven by a completely untrained amateur who didn’t even qualify for a driver’s licence. The teenager was able to execute the difficult braking system correctly and even expertly changed the points on the track. (This involves getting out of the tram and using a long piece of steel pipe to pull a lever across.)

His joyride came to an abrupt end in Kew where he was met with a police armed-response team in eight cars with lights flashing and sirens blaring. His passengers objected to his arrest and praised his driving skills. No-one was hurt during the escapade — unlike in Murder on a Melbourne Tram where a dead body was discovered on a tram.

Ciao Team Dusty!

Don’t you love that word ‘halcyon’? My new address has the word ‘halcyon’ (HAL-see-uhn) in it. It’s a word I’ve always liked. The dictionary meaning is ‘very happy and successful’ or ‘calm, peaceful, and happy’. But there is much more to this word.

Continue reading: mailchi.mp/3c2ca7877fd9/do-you-know-what-a-halcyon-is-what-about-australias-very-own-halcyon

In 2016, on a research trip for Rippling Red, Team Dusty was lucky enough to be in Darwin on Cracker Night, the night when Territorians go wild with fireworks to celebrate Territory Day.

That evening, after enjoying a meal and a drink or two at the casino, we headed back to our accommodation to watch the fireworks displays. Guess who was waiting at the hop-on hop-off bus stop? None other than the award-winning British actor Bill Nighy! We were gobsmacked. What was he doing in Darwin? Why was he travelling on a bus?

Eventually, we realised the bus passenger was not Bill Nighy but a look alike. He was the spitting image of the genuine article. But it belatedly dawned on us that ‘our’ Mr Nighy was too short to be the real deal.  He was around 5’6” while Bill Nighy is just over six feet. Dead giveaway, right? Even after drinks at the casino, we should have spotted the difference straight away. Duh.

Out on the balcony at our hotel, watching the rockets of colour whistling through the air to light up the night sky, I was reminded of the fireworks scene in Agatha Christie’s story Peril at End House. Unfortunately for one of the characters, the ‘fireworks popping and the squibs going off’ provided cover for a murder to take place.

This was not the case in Rippling Red. Dusty and Sean enjoyed the pungent aroma of spices from a home-cooked Indian meal while watching brilliant balls of colour exploding into the air. The murder they were investigating was another cold case Dusty was determined to solve.

Until next time. JB & Brigid George

Image:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-10(Supplied:HC Blechynden)

I was looking forward to visiting the extraordinary Jenolan Caves in New South Wales with Team Dusty to research the area for Dusty Kent Murder Mystery #8. However, it was not to be. The entire visitor precinct closed in 2019 due to severe weather damage and won’t reopen until next year. For the first time in the writing of these mysteries, Brigid George has had to make do with remote researching of the setting.

In Dusty Kent #8 (as yet untitled and unpublished) Sean and Dusty travel to the caves–the oldest cave system in the world at 340 million years old. When she first sees the four-storey complex of Jenolan Caves House with its gables, tiled roofs and multi-paned windows, Dusty exclaims, “It’s like a storybook house!” She did not know then that ghosts loitered in the storybook house.

And so it was in Agatha Christie’s short story Philomel Cottage, the main character was captivated by an isolated, dream-like country home, exquisite with its old-world charm. She did not know it was hiding a terrifying dark reality and shadows from the past. Dusty also experiences ‘the ghosts of years past’ in the spirits that accompany her on her morning walk and the ghosts of past employees that haunt the hotel.

Spirits of the dead have featured in previous Dusty Kent investigations such as the doomed princess of the yellow hibiscus flower in Disguising Demons, but the Jenolan Caves simply teem with ghosts and apparitions.

One setback after another has interrupted my writing of this mystery, which I began during my Covid isolation, but the light at the end of the tunnel is finally starting to shine.

Image: www.jenolancaves.org.au