Where Wild Winds Blow (Paperback or Softback)

Jack and Jude, with eyes on the past, have witnessed more of Earth than many famous explorers. Through hard work and considerable gumption, they constructed a ship of sail, raised their family afloat and achieved impressive sailing feats with little help. The myriad life experiences gained charge them to illuminate the bountiful adventures still available to all human souls and to record the degradation of Earth that they have witnessed.

Your journey begins at a leisurely pace, sailing down Australia's East Coast, dreaming of earlier adventures. Then it explodes into action when Jack and Jude land at Flinders Island in the Bass Strait and visit Wybalenna, Black Man's Houses, so-called 'Aboriginal Settlement' of 1834 which is the neglected burial site of more than a hundred Aborigines.

From there, Jack and Jude again do the unexpected by walking forty kilometres along a rail track shrouded in thick rainforest to document a hundred years of mine pollution into Tasmania's King River. Then back into sailing action when they take on the tempestuous Great Australian Bight to explore the Nuyts Archipelago first recorded by Australia's earliest explorers. Crossing the Great Australian Bight to the equally remote Recherche Archipelago in granite country, different from Nuyts dry sandstone, they find groups of isles rising out the mist like mermaids with pearl pendants.

At Albany in Western Australia they turned about, and this time find the Great Southern Ocean in a feisty mood. Struggling to escape cold, wet, strong south winds that keep driving them further off course, miraculously they get somewhere quiet in time to celebrate Jude's sixty-fifth birthday. And from there, a very pleasurable journey begins.

Inside Where Wild Winds Blow, Australia's earliest explorers share their views on places encountered along the way. And like Sir Francis Chichester, one of their heroes, Jack and Jude reveal fears and intimacies, and wax-lyrical to stimulate dreams and give justice to this amazing Earth.

Along with all that, they give simple technical advice on how just these two manage Banyandah.

For sailors and dreamers. Illustrated with 80 photos and maps.

Jack began life in an American mega-city during the topsy-turvy time following WWII. He grew up amongst skyscrapers and super highways, smog and streetlights, so he rarely saw the stars and had few escapes from city life except for sandy beaches and beautiful surf. One memorable escape came when his parents took him on a donkey ride down into the gloriously carved Grand Canyon in a scary ride that awakened his love for the great outdoors.