Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

My Love Must Wait
My Love Must Wait
My Love Must Wait
Ebook679 pages16 hours

My Love Must Wait

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Romance, passion, lusty adventure ... the story of Matthew Flinders navigator, explorer and lover.
When Matthew Flinders, the first man to chart and circumnavigate Australia, set sail from England in July 1801, he left behind the intrigues of his homeland but also his young bride of only a few weeks, Ann Chappell. He didn't see her again for more than nine years. During that time he carried out incredible feats of seamanship and navigation, made the first charts of much of the coastline of Australia, and was shipwrecked and later held prisoner by the French on Mauritius.Meticulously researched and written with great insight and sensitivity, My Love Must Wait is both a tender portrayal of faithful devotion, and a stirring re-creation of the courage and endurance of one of history's greatest seamen.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 1, 2013
ISBN9781743099339
My Love Must Wait
Author

Ernestine Hill

Ernestine Hill (1899-1972) was born in Rockhampton, Queensland. Throughout her life she travelled widely (and lightly), taking with her only the bare necessities, her typewriter and her notes and manuscripts. Her non-fiction included The Territory - the story of the Northern Territory - and The Great Australian Loneliness.

Related to My Love Must Wait

Related ebooks

Literary Criticism For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for My Love Must Wait

Rating: 3.4999999375 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

8 ratings1 review

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ernestine Hill was a mid-century Australian author who has become – not exactly forgotten, but certainly not much known outside her home country, and little enough read even there. She was mostly a journalist-cum-travel-writer, but she also wrote this one novel, a labour of love, which tells the eventful and ultimately sad life story of Matthew Flinders.Flinders was the last of the great maritime explorers, and probably the most brilliant navigator and cartographer of all of them. He was the one who proved that the fledgling European colonies known as New Holland and New South Wales were not points on an archipelago, but did indeed represent one single enormous land continent, which Flinders dubbed ‘Australia’. (Hence why nowadays ninety percent of Australian towns seem to be built around a main road called Flinders Street.)He survived shipwreck, unfriendly natives, struggles with stiff English authorities, and a six-year imprisonment by the French on the island formerly known as Île-de-France (now Mauritius), but Ernestine Hill also uncovered, beneath these better-known facts, an affecting love story between Flinders and his wife Ann, who didn't see him for nine years, and then only far too briefly.Unfortunately it was this subplot that gave the book its not-very-appropriate and rather Mills-&-Booney title. This is not really a love story overall, it's a biographical novelisation in the grand old style – I was about to write ‘the kind of thing no one writes anymore’, but it actually reminded me of nothing so much as Hilary Mantel's historical novels. Hill shares Mantel's rigidly faithful approach to her source material, and every vessel, headland and minor midshipman in this book turns out really to have existed; even the incidental dialogue is based on reams of letters, journals and logbooks.Although the book as a whole sometimes feels too long, the writing is curt and imaginative, much better than for some reason I was expecting. Islets are ‘annotated, every one, with the bright green asterisk of the coco-nut palm’, trees ‘creep away from the wind like bent and wizened beggars’, forbidding cliffs are ‘a vizor on the face of nature’, myriads of South Sea islands swim into view ‘as though God had suddenly split his world into kaleidoscopic fragments’. There is an efficiency to the prose that put me in mind of Flinders's own approving thoughts while reading William Dampier's memoirs: ‘He would sink a fleet and sack a city in a sentence, to devote two pages, with illustrations in the margin, to a catfish, a catamaran, or the sapadillo-tree.’Mind you, sometimes she does become more voluble. She is particularly good on the romantic but thankless precariousness of a life in the navy:How many had he known…shabby lieutenants on a few pounds a week fighting for their lives all their lives in the war and on the waves in rotten ships…ambassadors to the foreigner and the cannibal, trading for wheat, gold, pearls, pepper, territory…diplomats, chancellors and high financiers to the feathered savage, walking encyclopaedias of world-wide knowledge, vegetable, animal and mineral […] homeless men, nameless men, their wave-washed journals the first pages in the chronicles of empire, their future at worst a watery grave, at best an old age of cards, prating to their families on Navy half-pay…and here he was aspiring to be one of them. Why? ‘I gave my heart to know wisdom.’Occasional passages are lightly overwritten, but it's always good fun:Scarred and tattooed sailors of the Seven Seas, with evil, mottled faces thronged the taverns to fight by day and lust by night where harlots writhed their polished bodies, whirling in veils of flame, to the obscene screaming of the Congo pipes and fandango of tambourines. The West Indies were a painted veil of cruelty and greed. Here faith was blasphemy, the sea polluted with filth, and God and man defiled.I hadn't realised Flinders was from Lincolnshire, a part of England I love and where I lived for many years, so I was secretly thrilled to read the lavish descriptions of his childhood in a little village just outside Boston. In a final chapter that is really a kind of afterword, Hill writes movingly of the strange coincidence that Matthew Flinders and the Pilgrim Fathers both set off from the same obscure place, linking this tiny corner of the Fenlands with both Australia and America: ‘The square tower of Boston Stump looked down on the little ships that sailed to great beginnings; that low coast of East Anglia has mothered two great nations.’Angus & Robertson have been printing this book continuously since 1941, so you'd think they'd have had time to correct the text by now – yet there are still far too many typos, misspellings and misprints in this edition. On the credit side, it does come with a very good introduction from Debra Adelaide. If you have a holiday hankering for sea stories, historical fiction, tragic love stories or obscure Australiana, this one will certainly tick your boxes, weigh your anchors, barbie your shrimps and shiver your timbers.

Book preview

My Love Must Wait - Ernestine Hill

)-abook_preview_excerpt.htmlۖǑ%+=IkeHvE,$ JC`=3<37ƥ'}<@#" ̸e6_}8 ]{|X·ӧ~PƲ8W ע;N-cWc1cQq,Nu7T<aacEe9 1LE8qWx1MB]6_\x_R2Sطqb}-n`y&{Knu_|}]!6omxNn+ޞ<ڿa3~ mɏ[˹+N1.GjCt\m9U{*&" =LQz.#޷8ګxRM X ݴP>vw7 ص]c/57{nՎ;x=؟mIxo?=Tu<Ů_L]1P%p {hڄZCNUk>>V{|2C^vn짡(18+UE]#nnos_ߘ(Q0.al7t\Ls7LT5q.a,ījWElaxT\cLs%Z|W'炧WLn( Xiw#?ߔᚾ+ձ:`32vnx{;=D^zskY!X)KHR9y+Z;uśVk>mqc5*;BK|Z1#H6gOCBm,˹זH `_\)!IS{9{w-~찿섘0lVBR_៿jBmeR sG/e~cWͶCmớ.+==}$T?J~Qخ:6cQαݱwCr;zCၴ\v-ڰ'Ʉ7d]t60o,<@s{6wh]Lz{H)C 5L>P]=7U oΪ_<FZ\uW䱌t.س@1̦/.xų v19\Ɇ`xS/G ʣhClui՚0QSGCUQ5^d,g eSK >E?hh'cqqpzl3.&մkkd~e:ٱyi5cfK?-d؃c(Cn7;-{x0f\Y {R{'&] ɹsDt-omaA~Oz\#0V254ZF=ӿ¦H G,܁)w:fl?xU<$:x飽ֿ|/b1-T)( VMVK|5#[6̧F.=20ulN07 /9` PS\Ԏ՘=YJ2Gxľz GspƎCItlw Nyh|2nA1Wԝ┓x $ҷNL3O7e|  T'k.ߗ6&\o6"S6'v>V \FOiBOb΂>݃}l໘|UsmrHK3fw5 X0+~v2*ͼbrY"G. fG1W0.86Z,s*V gaV(q!0 KT XV8#69=Pv Cf(t=6~5ee0)hŮj2~-栒ՂM/6irr+4Y?x>;i,`ӱ#P4YχJ,|k:ePR0n0՗odIdMTAD xSm?zjvJ;ɗi zx׃;y*&&b|l* G q3籬%i!^a;00}aG< ]Q9(HƜeˢ/8uK 0 {*i;W Iuo"cwOZxeD|pXZ0^n%䀕kqb`GZIu˨aR)si7Ygˮ!;nЈWϟDUalhpG@9M ZɞT >wIJ$NMӼ-ᅮn y6*ɥ 2ɰMMIquGֶlob%W,vruP_ϵiӉa/,Ye |/J{A19߆KCsv"N{ ut^Q {K(XmCnq1sϺʮ`8fX&nf !L`߳%q TM׻PC9Kni.KfMKhDZ :k/p) 4E9Sz;U`p?虛^w nh:\He 54-Np's+TAGk[pʙ1yٖhA5  d4D:]#ebq&:0vA6ø EbeDn):*$VxruW1w=V_?RDÀ]iL83yJTa_7'fz &7oe8US#:HE,/Tuph;M2k76KP%GGa\%Ah& 15axw{`&ԭ 6/O A^8ll1-3K_ol aA*毝)cLPN&"わSįZ^܂q':td@|F1Kh\Lioq߮4vcg+u9j$II95 9wٴ' _ƦRgO&4!fғ!=Uc]!jĊ7{0'{'_y퀶u8\f"^fA$Q ܳ @!.bB0U KXXM{ Y7 ^TZU F>h85yߵ}׿Q_tC.<{|)x Nr%Gf-{M.󀤦Cf-W$oh R :ZxA!/}le=<9+sD1(7v_Hӡ\qΣZ"Ń';Qg3uIT7537ˑ/=<ΑXjp#G~0'?MCKh8wf*!/[GX!*9Ra4}M6yfA.Ъ~ d ؾ B=u(o$?m`dmuw|]Ӧ82M%;x[UvVd[UZ ?lZ M=stGפۛOZ R8YM`hu VDCV]:L^=MC4@ kOvҀeD${ dpC%Nݳ%A IR[3T}/ ;*pLK`-W85*1!TI@WCѳ?&>sW=L<:؏xFmJ-^4׮EZ,ғQǃm]KH=,Ck^]o" Qz'yAcG/Y{Ա^&uҩ^NG$f20ߩk#Lm3쨺R0*'R\4.PF?u攡j-2K|O4rh;N"񖙴- E}$8\OWboş\ .Z~=NU CdmW\qmzfAE#`•n!,7?/B`c6lv-:=B |/@8dӥ6p$k*]( Q{?ǫ3`}DOU90=q"?!d҇XŤCC}_B#{7L>.NZe*@s/ekzH]ȶ:rHx<UfGd'33fI؂C5y\audC <_9~7]1tPXw"sސLQ!0';#JfZ0fP'9f8S>Cu|=R= %R 0C'UfW[)Kt.E]f^yIǜHH >$ GfX2;t5%?8gJ:³L=͓ dloy8e4DiP@w-;GhSst8w^F.\ga/Ck ]bzhR.H?Rqe>—䇕f B˭8*;[)IzmNp:'*С\‹`LyN\Z R<5ݧt^yv1eP+*Mm s}<'3,zyx: jT"C=aZsnс]·zt߆Fzc!9հ%V6RЃ=XYPe:9cvB-^Z^QfT⧭ Wل~ 8pޛQD,vPd~Cwc'd#i뇘4"@mGIS7 E#~(}h|)m.('ݦK]\.Hn}oVwnu sɸ<8`  D`OjNF4r/f1/5 *9"34t4J6WL ̈́lO7)T;&J8ϊFT|'m͟wEUː]zByo´ڤQTP' v՞o&ƒbuQ0O GF%ޏ` [C$SjDŜmw+7':<~i+¼#()թ;uM>9r4rnpԩw3Ѳ+?jf'GiXK ,%1qfLjqԔt]E)řf3ʷ[=)@yTtZV(ᓹ";wqQ5-ҕn"^FӃj>W$_%rӨ#흜'0vInQ7*̈ f)>v<dDSn*σ;%ԐDˣq5]:;cNzO(ֻ`R*H7#'h`j@m9ҏ*UTLnMҏ/?r&/n6 ъItdF1ӭ#B5|.KjW钁G5NW/R5gKZQ=/+*tQKY$>@ug70a tc([UKw.NaIԱ?wX*y؞3(f:;h(v@v*Wtx!o[iugatY9 gd , za?3;A-f@gi-NH٢NXO$CXS:v=PfcY{&Σsw;FgZ)e)-VLAEB$MwTI~.u4Rfc.j&G*\s-$l}zWZ9-l|'pe$:԰;]]2,Xh_0&A0gb[ `@Ɵ1qtވ丶щ A`TjtlѐHAWxԀ>6B}oNVġud$H‘5!e32J`Y@n*mr"zͦo(h\ ڪaSiFtF|rrM,kQ> RT֭XMzl-sHΑؖƷ#Ku"|n#d= pQd#8Y}J @mk{$iTcb&$n $Eשa 2QB tMXpxZqN:Aw;!-ě@dQt ?D*!~U=$>BD5d@y@2a bY]8TLjHZsM2rirUu @pͱ/t J +q0n0nnxϑGXaAj~s4fv^_u)m:I҄* tXz J).VǨfzzfK>+j 1 GwE]?dOwe-Ng/4bykY8$: T OCէJ?NKTW8Ĥ:9ʁ]u`iۙ%, Mu@M2aI`44lHF3yH"ĨYi\,V' 6Q)x*T#jWqvT&hGU=y(+ڛ[d/hp#&#8wSO;a@PATjzr"`h١~ 0?|H(^Eyϑ: a@v""7eK/' {7v0PGdȸVD6'07|x#8Z$m1:ӎ2JNi3@3`Cs.оr IQj|VX gѕH.@$n @3GD{&v\T2I$HjnECZlKfCHpx""Mպ{)ljލ-I~qh>HLH%,t0-$0oh^h-"ձczz]óJ@ j{FMuRpRa- (Һj9]JWPr1qV{mGŘbmYAJI:{R#kgײK'L*CIŋp8˥Fd1 Hݝ!F' ዧ&qAS[V]CB-c.57,UE`UQ! 14" OC#S˝IZ}xE7QE*$C<2%}2y>xTzM.D&8TMF;5Ly^X4g*ɕsz0 ӊp䝅t@47.:ảB6zeAbSyoZ+ y&z~bTJGϖtB\SG_<+;"2LnXP>K{ˑXKy;cVI1Ts3uL<s e*Q_*ɨ5ܖUSv2̶K@Z]يHWv5ՏE 4"7éXut*Tφ N(M|wN4`,ybY㇣D\'rY٘-S7 QO;eB蝼j<\! c\`)+w.>YdbvpQ.!e8 ӽ/<$bEs$Pl3~Æ蹬~ BXw&F- sJuQ<霟$g+컛b?Xܗ6fRjKzJ`U62N{EuLF~3.p3ոZTDMm`j亁%RX];e% Pz9<=>4YA#2%JDF@%5?22r3^ C Jݓʹ. >x^=CJOuThp >/<0ɼ:Dd]<\7A\˸2VQ[6R=\fӄQ&mUk5fJT&eH>A=bD;"l;zݍrV˷1:AnN)7Ó2f6<$&+ElmЯ{8v{b5]32vSVH6 O)M7O<ɹ7u]̼!;il8Awka{2.M.hvHnxyAh"0Z8=8)Y#$T{ Q.Uj7^LaVN0 dUY2+[dL=(?|Df=w-X56XR/:EKxs"zmi84PRWC$V>9(2JN'!Fܦoaȋ+L\朙:npVm.WAC_J6R hqvGc5YD6DfzQ= 8iJ*tpR{',/{g2"j@65(t F;[]F K s'iĸ>!+/q(y4B'&2 f^ 9< j/YI\mo4Eħ|Eža]Ɲ&OK=m*~ ?d:DɅ|✎w3B4gGH?:D +vlE@EnFA=(trJ;ƪW픺?2GI@nH%oPɥ˽u>܎-ELrHɻmx_ٴRyU} gS2y3Ynga}-gs;3=<% Gg72a4p hpuůӼu%)3/3Ο u+U|-U+߬PR ~dww3R.aa Q=6Q雽WQn :J rnk1YNBkMЄO7*BYd j¶تĂIt4//^lo)acO_+z.aK\#D@ WziXo,];Te`Z ԍݷVC ĸ*c:pPu/ݴ%pܠKlL윷Q_R&G>Mv4M>q/3_սycKhu̬~_'6b Ŝ#C ^٭`&T?*, v2JGٟ<>7s嵌1?39!$$XGPolO&޸jkY- BśeL\ A:=!$Y[ UNmR&hKnjA నcgu=73 ],,'>iYv>e$n=Qw=LU[.t~ Оy͜vNtv`S󠶻S.QJ_ɆԗYx?\aN>Xvm8jr*TOtp^IJۡj?WH6Ǫs@hj*O`>c}@(Ù(o96VJ"FE, ]٫A=@ѼSNݕ>[OS"rㄈYȋ_ݐF;7ד6R7nU3/S d1Jzz<2OaL9|ݞ 5\D|A*C{zcd)^shϫmKgI$'XtfbH]Q {Zϖ"!wթc܋ܪ0ؘK682 dο1Hb9aKg@`#N䣠^H$&@4h_-ǖ dU̹ B(RFB9„>{d47KMvz۝F5-Ojd<ѹ@!BWRiSfJx=[ 9IUR % mF)#s)(>L;"vAaA\UFZ<.~;YsuAς "fΉuƉ_:Dr>v8p=pJ(BmnK̛ԱT}ʚԿ'8*V[x}N'-ayZذ+x?@:etʲ o3zeC:ޤ8I./#GiKNY]":磩?Fb iO:A<}|ݓSg'8HJAk -vNƪ1IrX &gA5wq.[$3?@cS;ĴY!\v\Qa&iTBH-f 7 n8vt]6wv,\ ԙfPbNUyW]=%m|I W"sy7T\Cz-(U˙h? '^U*[.Ȇ罨욗0=aO0 E9&NKoGWҫRw ̊1Ex&(4 @ѷ!.ʬhSOiƒpphû9x*1Oy C\7x*\ҙyD/8 ;T|OxjyO7Ny<0K۲N&S\x%7hvhys L}j&xe71oީaW{{m5٬Ze}&2 5{Be 6-wSOh>]_wxtCpT@qatO s>wֻ-жIA D u{xfނS-y hn@}jB@ZY3=o{EyGQE`@=R DV.'hT~C#2+g ,^sfL~7mJX "J1ޥf(Xa{0uCV|cWD&?S!\2MP77c㴹?uy"bvM{3<:MIK/ jb>E˫aŷؗA^ގb,#&YNfC}=xwƥK(>Rwuk0#{$ېh}^- = N_0س^s)SxWBĺ JRw$vVzurD}c};aθ߁nDA*z8pN5=c)g,XUe(\w[:tO>z.9J5BL8 t1a[9aX.cۀEdCǮ x #RhPh a?KBx'_Hʷ%M qRhp25> bN ͬdsm|L+5Equ#&%} z;~NArYFaks9c"\_8Bgp{.*ڴ>YNy$.6| ˋuq!_Jmn "J2{wK9 2Wr/Љ:n';"_n4#ͱ nm3MK>_ghJsJ1z-ԩłC&ȶf34ٔ 5^;n?#n^呡bdI7s8tݫKYԗ :^D+p3àPBc.\G 7% %RR>QNL $28&t8Ґz2G-j̡RJg0Ar!*_&DYg,;u>8f&=UVK|6a9IQwﲜܬҵj(?;M"j\ Z#9Wϫ* ̌n  S yRts:\.;Mg3DMYٮ잾d|<{ѫ|Fr'[}"û~/'8p<2,8q "ՓY >C 6S\whf[I D2'nګ@":ҁ}rvci#s=SoPSN$EK}:p<sy{Qêm>ݭrˤ"Y&(y@,xnv 怵n=oWx40 S7!,ˊӺrZ~N+*g gԔ 9}T l#;ZV79}ͮڠw‹U5/i3 ZoΛܣpj Te牭am]6#lEj)4y$5W}~ld=ys%0޴+j?pj5XtR@I͝4TZ\co%a"Vo4S[BRhdG:j?޻3n:x}wޥA xKu7D Ua;R89)8˭F.$ط׾P.Q{c oSDܤ%mjxX詩N>`4E.hCqizw_^;af*>;羵~WxME]ӀK!S(,A՛z?|cݑd/rwCā%*̑+E[c+&]~]Hj|_t,s%m 6p؊[527pJWv 6!]s½VY^5p#OOR40Ԩ cxMvSzsҝpV UZr3)|+~Z>a.UZrV|gP谑xt[C=>IǷIrHf+Z=VqIQ# tUV̔".,ڀ;k,Â\~ :䊋 h[sl
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1