Deepest thanks to Tess Atie and Greg Balding. Tess grew up in the area that was later proclaimed Litchfield National Park. She has family all the way from Mandorah on the Cox Peninsula to Peppimenarti, beyond the Daly River. Tess runs Northern Territory Indigenous Tours, a wholly Indigenous-owned tour company specialising in natural and cultural interpretation from an Aboriginal viewpoint. She and her partner, Greg, generously assisted me with passages of the text and showed me how to see the Top End with my heart and soul as much as with my head. Their deep knowledge and infectious love for their wondrous and vast backyard ripples through this book.
In January 2019, it was my honour to travel to Groote Eylandt, off the remote eastern coast of Arnhem Land, with the MJD Foundation, an extraordinary organisation that works in partnership with Aboriginal Australians, families and communities living with the genetically inherited neurodegenerative condition Machado-Joseph disease. The highest concentration of MJD in the world is on Groote Eylandt, where an estimated 186 members of the 1100-strong Indigenous population have parents or grandparents who inherited the disease, giving them a 50 per cent chance of also having MJD. It was amid the dream-like wilderness of Groote that Steve ‘Bakala’ Wurramara told me of the bush medicine and deep magic knowledge passed on to him by his father and grandmother, which he is using to assist Sydney scientists in finding a treatment or cure for his MJD condition. I could not have met a more inspiring individual just prior to writing this book and I have no doubt that a good deal of Bakala’s charm and charisma unconsciously found its way into Molly’s hero, Sam Greenway. Deepest thanks to Bakala and the MJD Foundation. Thanks to the team at Translationz for assistance with Yukio’s dialogue.
The poem Greta enjoys in the story is ‘The Woman at the Washtub’, written in 1902 by the Australian poet Victor Daley. Molly and Aubrey quote lines from Walt Whitman’s 1855 poem ‘Song of Myself’.
Story and structure ripple through Catherine Milne’s veins and her passion for books and words infects the blood of every last writer lucky enough to work with her. You saw where Molly was going from the start, Catherine, and it opened skies in my head. Thank you, dear friend. Alice Wood – wing woman, wonder, weapon – this book exists because of you. Everyone needs a Scott Forbes in their life. Sentence saviour. Error terrier. Hawk-eyed genius. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for the exceptional proofreads, Pamela Dunne and Nicola Young. Darren Holt, you are a miracle man to me. A gift, too. Thank you. Thanks to Jim Demetriou, Brigitta Doyle, Libby O’Donnell, Darren Kelly, Tom Wilson and the whole rattling and unstoppable HarperCollins Australia engine. Thanks to the great James Kellow for your faith, which turned into my belief. Thanks to every last Australian bookseller and book reader for everything you did for Eli Bell and his family and by that I mean my family.
Thanks to Christine Middap and the whole beloved Oz mag gang. Thanks to Christine Westwood, Michelle Gunn, Helen Trinca, Chris Dore, Nicholas Gray, Michael Miller, Campbell Reid, Justin Lees, Amy Lees, Andrew McMillen and all the glorious members, past and present, of that white-hot indie-pop-rock-journo band The Bureau. Thanks, Mark Schliebs, for the early read and the inspiration. Thanks, Stephen Romei, fellow rooster. Thank you, Sir Matthew Condon, fellow sailor. Thank you, Asher Keddie, Kristina Olsson, Richard Glover, Venero Armanno, Annabel Crabb, Clare Bowditch and Kathleen Noonan, earth angels all. Thanks for your magic, Mem Fox. Thanks to Adriana and Dan Penman, Kristi and Matthew Gooden, Rebecca and Chris Lane, dear laughing circle. Thanks, Kristine and Stefan Szylkarski, Suellen Cash and Brad Sonego, Serena Coates, Edward Louis Severson III and every last beloved friend I thanked the last time.
Thanks for all of it, Mum. Thank you, Darcy, Mara, James, Reggie, Ethan and Rosalie Dalton and your beautiful mums and dads. Thanks, dear Jesse. Thanks, Dawn and Bernie Franzmann. Thanks, Lenora, Michael, Patrick and David O’Connor. Thanks, Tim, Kate, Jack and Ava Franzmann. Fiona, Beth and Sylvie, I would need to write a novel to thank you properly, which is why I wrote this one. I love you. And thanks for the skies, Dad. I see you. Rock on, George Toringo, one more time now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TRENT DALTON writes for The Weekend Australian Magazine. He’s a two-time winner of a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a four-time winner of a Kennedy Award for Excellence in NSW Journalism and a four-time winner of the national News Awards Features Journalist of the Year. His debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe (HarperCollins, 2018), is a critically acclaimed national bestseller, winner of the 2019 Indie Book of the Year Award, the MUD Literary Prize and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. At the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards, the book won a record four awards, including the prestigious Book of the Year Award. Boy Swallows Universe has been published across thirty-four English-language and translation territories.
PRAISE FOR ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES
‘As Australian as outback red dirt and as universal as the sky young Molly Hook’s journey takes place beneath, All Our Shimmering Skies is an open-hearted wonder, by turns heartbreaking and full of hope, no less than an instant classic’ Venero Armanno
‘A glinting, big-hearted miracle of a book’ Richard Glover
‘Australia has a new literary hero. Molly Hook – part Cordelia, part Jo March, part Pippi Longstocking – pulls us into a story and a landscape that is mythic, beguiling
