Robert Macklin
Castaway
Hachette Australia, 2019
The astonishing and unknown story of Narcisse Pelletier - a French cabin boy cast away in 1858 on the coast of Far North Queensland.
In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was aboard the trader Saint-Paul when it was wrecked off the eastern tip of New Guinea.
Scrambling into a longboat, Narcisse and the other survivors crossed almost 1000 kilometres of the Coral Sea before reaching the shores of Far North Queensland. If not for the local Aboriginal people, Narcisse would have perished. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their Uutaalnganu world. Then, in 1875, his life was again turned upside down.
Drawing from firsthand interviews with Narcisse after his return to France and other contemporary accounts of exploration and survival, and documenting the spread of European settlement in Queensland and the brutal frontier wars that followed, Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures in a time of transformation and upheaval.
About the Author
Robert Macklin was born in Queensland and educated at University of Queensland and the Australian National University. He has worked as a journalist at the Courier Mail, The Age and The Bulletin, and was associate editor of the Canberra Times until 2003. Robert is the author of 29 books, including Dark Paradise, Hamilton Hume and four works focusing on the SAS and Australia's Special Forces. He lives in Canberra.
