On a far away island, on an isolated patch of ground stand the old gravestones of Norfolk Island. The soil beneath them hides the dark and sometimes tainted history of men and women who lived and died in this place.
There stories range from the descendants of the First Fleeters who sailed from England in the late 1700s, from soldiers who guarded convicts in the infamous prison and were murdered by them, and from the descendants of the Mutineers
from the Bounty who came to Norfolk Island from Pitcairn Island in 1856.
Two weeks ago, when I wandered through the cemetery reading the epitaphs, I was reminded of the time, when, as a child, I held my father’s hand
and walked between the gravestones in the local cemetery in Yorkshire.
One of my father's favourite
pastimes was reading the inscriptions carved on old tombstones.
Ten years ago, it was this
indelible childhood memory which I used to create one of the main threads when
I wrote “THE BLACK THREAD". In this fiction story, an old man, searching
for something particular in a graveyard, makes a remarkable discovery.
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