Neil WJ Smith

What is this true story? A magic carpet ride into the unknown? A spiritual journey? A romantic adventure? A true mystery that led me a merry chase across 5 countries? An exercise in genealogical research leading back 200 years? True drama on the High Seas? The case of an unsung hero from the early British settlement of Australia? Confrontation between the early settlers and a fearsome maori chief? The clues to an illegitimate, perhaps legitimate, child of the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of England? The plight of the inhabitants of London's overcrowded jails who were transported to a new colony in the antipodes to start a hard new life in a new land inhabited only by the aborigines? Of one escaped convict's life among the aborigines for 60 years? Of a granny who was around 17 years after she had died, who could only have been a ghost? Or of the author, bankrupt, homeless, friendless, penniless and unemployed, who settles down to write his story, full of more twists and turns than fiction.