Okay, so the highlight of last week was a new episode of Once Upon A Time being released on Netflix... Yes, I know that sounds incredibly tragic, but it was kind of a crap week and I was grateful for the distraction. I stumbled across Once Upon A Time less than a year ago and devoured the first five seasons embarrassingly quickly. I even had to impose a Once Upon A Time ban in between seasons two and three because I was getting zero work done. ("Who cares about the draft of my book? They've just gone to Neverland !!!") I've never been a huge fan of fantasy and I watch hardly any TV, so what was it about this show that made me stay stuck on the couch every time Netflix said 'next episode play
Going to school in Australia, my history lessons were full of convicts and early settlers. As kids, we learned of our country's past by singing songs like Botany Bay and Ten Thousand Miles Away. Because stick a few chords beneath a story and anything becomes less horrific... While I always knew Australia was founded on plenty of blood and hardship, researching my current work-in-progress, Forgotten Places led me to discover some really dark and twisted tales from my country's history. Here are a few from Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) where the book is set: The Ladies of Macquarie Harbour Until 1833, the worst convicts were shipped through a whirlpool of water called Hell's Gates into Macq