THE BOOK

Joseph Inch and Ann Grant/McNamara are two young people shipped from England and Ireland to serve seven years as convicts in the newly established Penal Colony of New South Wales – both only convicted of petty theft.

He was just 17 when he was dragged off a ship in the notorious Second Fleet in 1790 and she just 24 when she arrived three years later in 1793. They would find love together in this far-flung, isolated colony and together sow the seeds of a dynasty that would grow to become colonial royalty in one generation, boasting shops, a tavern and a house in Sydney’s Pitt Street, and huge farms in Governor Macquarie’s New Country.

Their story, from reluctant convicts to surviving and embracing wealth, romance and tragedy, including suicide, makes a terrific read as they forged a life in the Great South Land. Today the family’s impact lives on in cricketing history with the Ashes and in heritage-listed mansions in modern-day Australia.

This “fact is better than fiction” story follows the growth of the family which included English gentry, Danish seafarers and Scottish farmers, all dating back to the 1700s. Dennis Lingane brings them all alive with his inimitable storytelling in this wonderfully colourful 225-year jog through Australia’s European history from birth to modern day, with a welter of colourful illustrations.

THE AUTHOR

Dennis Lingane has spent a lifetime in the media in the UK and Australia. In the UK he worked on local and Fleet Street newspapers and was involved in the pop world and the Carnaby Street fashion set at the start of the “Swinging Sixties”. He abandoned all that to travel to Australia, where his first job was working underground in a gold mine in before finding his feet in the Australian media.

Since then he has worked as a columnist writing for myriad media publications, ranging from the highly regarded Weekend Australian to Playboy magazine, and for some years was a syndicated columnist for News Ltd Australia-wide, reporting on technology and consumer electronics. During that period he travelled extensively, covering international conferences, and says he became more familiar with the streets of Berlin, New York, Paris, London, Chicago and Tokyo than his adopted home in Australia.

Since settling back in Western Australia he has had a long and intensive career working as news reporter and feature writer for major media organisations including the West Australian, Sunday Times, Western Mail, Sunday Independent and ABC. Besides this busy professional life he found time to restore and tour the world in his 1925 vintage Bentley crossing Africa, New Zealand, Australia, China and Europe. Many of his adventures have been published in his books.

Since retiring from the newspaper industry eight years ago he has focused on writing and self-published non-fiction books. This is his eighth and he describes it as a canter through Australian history seen through the eyes of one family, starting with a convict youth in the Second Fleet.

In retirement he and his wife Lesleyann (who also had a long career in the media) live in WA’s picturesque South West in a heritage-listed village on a 12-acre hillside property overlooking the Blackwood River valley, which he says reminds him of Ireland where he spent some of his youth on holidays.

THE EVENT

Includes author presentation, book sales and signings, and complimentary light refreshments.