Читать книгу The Cattle Baron - Margaret Way - Страница 2

Dear Reader,

For years now, I’ve wanted to write a book about an ancient Egyptian presence in Australia. This is it!

My interest was captured as a young woman when I read in the paper about a find of hand-forged Egyptian bronze, copper and iron tools, pottery and coins dating back more than two thousand years. This discovery took place on an excavation site less than thirty miles from where we lived. The following year, five hundred miles away in tropical North Queensland, an Egyptian calendar stone, gold scarabs and gold coins were found.

There’s a well-known story of a North Queensland cattleman who used to serve his dinner guests off gold plates fashioned from melted down gold coins found on the station!

Objects that appear to be from ancient Egypt have also appeared in Western Australia and New South Wales.

These finds excited me. I had been an avid student of ancient history in high school, perhaps because of a vivid and romantic imagination, so I knew quite a lot about ancient civilizations. Egypt has always had a strange fascination for me, akin to my love of ghost stories and the supernatural. Perhaps you feel the same way.

So was there an ancient Egyptian presence in Australia? My heroine, Rosie Summers, thinks so, although cattle baron Chase Banfield is skeptical. See what you think!

Margaret Way