I never planned to write a book – it was more a case of a great story finding me, but more about that later. I’m a native of Adelaide, South Australia, coincidentally the hometown of the fugitive extraordinaire at the centre of my bizarre but true tale.

Just a bit about me, because lets face it, if author’s lives were that interesting we’d all be writing autobiographies. My early schooling was refreshingly unorthodox. My mother was the governess on an outback sheep station in New South Wales. I’d sit beside her in an old barn and listen in to the lessons she broadcast through a primitive wireless to hundreds of other kids on the outlying properties. After that it took me a while to get used to the more formal education of English boarding schools. Later I spent a couple of years with my family in Singapore before going to…