Anthony W. Buirchell's Blog

Added new pages called The Family War Heroes 1914-1918 and 1939 – 1946

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

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Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

This is a different blog to my first effort and as such you will find it more friendly. It has something for children who are interested in following our little plush toy crocodiles and something for adults who are into publishing novels or Picture books.

I hope you enjoy the topics and the day by day pages that will be displayed.

Crisis at Dinner Falls, Atherton.
The baby crocodile hatches out….oh how cute

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing Novels
Researching and Writing Ancestry Books

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towering over the entire landscape is Mount Warning, the ancient plug of a super volcano. As you approach from north, west or east this gigantic monolith dominates the skyline. Other mountains that border the massive caldera are dwarfed in the background.

Nestled in the lush green pastures beside the gentling flowing Tweed River are the towns of Murwillumbah and Tyalgum. It is in this setting that the novel DESTINATION DAINTREE had its genesis.

The Stewart family ventured overland from the Richmond River area to take up selection 14 on the Bray’s Creek and set up their dairy farm.

William John Stewart’s selection 14 at Bray’s Creek as it is today.

There would be a total of 15 children produced by William John and Mary Jane. With the exception of  Claude, the eldest, all the other children grew up in the Tyalgum farmlands.

In the family of 15 there were two sets of twins, Marion and Hersee then Mary and William John who was called Jack. Four of the boys went away in the army to France. Rueben paid the ultimate sacrifice, Don was shot in the buttock by friendly fire but survived, Hersee was wounded in the arm and was repatriated and finally Jack spent four years in the medical field camps.

Marion met and married Burton Borregard Johnson and after having five children set off for the Daintree. The novel DESTINATION DAINTREE depicts the struggles, tramuas and tragedies that beset the family that resulted in Burton’s decision to relocate.

Jack was an intriguing character as in his youth he was badly injured as a wood cutter. He survived and became a photographer. Later he joined the Medical Corps as outlined above. Many of his photograhs adorn the walls of the Tyalgum Hall and are in the book History of Tyalgum and District.

Frank was the youngest child and through his mother’s ministering became a man of the cloth. Rose was Marion’s sister and they were close. She married Henry John Smith and they lived their entire lives in the Bray’s Creek area.

Readers of the book DESTINATION DAINTREE will meet and enjoy the company of the real life characters mentioned above as they go about their lives in the delightful settings around Murwillumbah, Tyalgum and Bray’s Creek.

Come and join us as we set out to the locations where the novel began and where it finished. We are tracing the footsteps of Marion and Burton and their intrepid children Madeline, Burt, Eva, Isobel and Keith as they leave Tyalgum and push on to Rockhampton. At Rockhampton a sixth child, Max was added to the family along with a 15 year old redheaded english orphan. They then enter the beautiful but inhospitable environment of the Daintree River

Destination Daintree Book Launch 

Complete cover for Destination Daintree

Author appearance, May 23, 2015 10:00AM

Orpheum Bookshop, Tyalgum, NSW, 10 Coolamon Street, Tyalgum. NSW, AU

http://www.anthonybuirchell.com

Book Launch of DESTINATION DAINTREE for new Australianuauthor Anthony W. Buirchell. My host is Hoel of the Orpheum Bookshop. It is the Tyalgum Village Market Day which is a drawcard in itself. All more than welcome. I chose Tyalgum as a launching pad as the Australian part of the novel DESTINATION DAINTREE starts on the slopes of Mt Warning which towers over the quaint Tyalgum Village.

We’re off to Queensland flying QANTAS the safest airline yippee

DESTINATION DAINTREE Book Tour

Event for Anthony W. Buirchell

Date: May 22, 2015 08:00AM — July 04, 2015 05:00PM

Venue: From Tyalgum to Daintree Village, Queensland, Brisbane, AU

Type: author appearance

Website: http://www.anthonybuirchell.com

Added by: Anthony Buirchell

Following the route the main characters from the novel DESTINATION DAINTREE took in the period 1911 to 1926. They began in Tyalgum and after misfortunes interrupted their lives they trekked to the Daintree in North Queensland.

The main aim of our journey is to cover the places they went to and to visit the many relations that we have found since beginning to write the novel.

 

There appears to be a big push to use social media to market your novels and books. This sounds like a go as there are millions of would be customers. The major problems that we have met in our efforts are:

Learning to use the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Instagram, blogs, YouTube and the like

Finding friends and getting them involved. You get your own site but the battle is way from won. You still. Have to attract the customers and keep them interested.

Time is sparse and so you use a lot to write then you neglect marketing. Conversely you work on marketing then you neglect your writing.

There must be Public Relation graduates who could offer cheap ways to market especially if they take on several clients and use similar strategies for each.

We have resorted to the tried methods such as wearing t-shirt ads, posting fliers, walking the post boxes etc. All must help in some little way.

There appears to be a big push to use social media to market your novels and books. This sounds like a go as there are millions of would be customers. The major problems that we have met in our efforts are:

Learning to use the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Linkedin, Instagram, blogs, utube and the like

Finding friends and getting them involved. You get your own site but the battle is way from won. You still. Have to attract the customers and keep them interested.

Time is sparse and so you use a lot to write then you neglect marketting. Conversely you work on marketting then you neglect your writing.

There must be Public Relation graduates who could offer cheap ways to market especially if they take on several clients and use similar strategies for each.

We have resorted to the tried methods such as wearing t-shirt ads, posting fliers, walking the post boxes etc. All must help in some little way.

Look out for my new novel it will be available mid April. The cover is certainly eye catching!  

Cover for Destination Daintree

My book Destination Daintree is at the publisher and it is an interesting, exciting and frustrating experience. For economic reasons I chose to self publish through Vivid Publishing. My first book “The Restless Danish Immigrants: The Johnson Family was non fiction and the publishing process was relatively easy although sending the copy in just before Christmas was not a clever idea.

This time my book is fiction and I have chosen to have 100 books (minimum allowed) printed and an ebook. This sounds like a great way to get your book out into the book world but be assured there is no substitute for patience and hard work.

After writing the book I had to do all the editing and then place the chapters making sure the first chapter began on an odd numbered page. With the help of my wonderful partner Deb this took us many weeks. Even then we were never sure when we would be “ready”. Eventually you just moved into the next phase which is to make contact with the publisher through email and then allow them to begin guiding you through the process.

Not too much guiding but a lot of filling in forms which leave you debating into the small hours. The important parts of the novel must be analysed as the words become imperative to the internet search. Was Daintree and Destination good words to use? Are they too common? Do they “belong” to another author? If you search for the words do you get nothing or a million hits? And the questions go on.

Will tell you the next part as it occurs.

Keep smiling it is a terrific feeling when you get your book published and even greater when you actually sell a book or get a positive comment from a reader.

In 1963 I was sitting in my second year high school class when the Deputy walked in and wrote Temperance on the board. He gave us all a sheet of writing paper and demanded we write an essay based on the word on the board.

No idea and from my quick observation of my mates nor did they. Luckily one of the girls was brave enough to raise their hand and ask. The only word I recall was alcoholism so I set to writing.

Six weeks later the Deputy again walked into the class and shocked us all by handing me a Certificate as the Best Country Essay winner. I could write!

Well that soon was reversed as in third year, fourth year and fifth year all my essays came back with the dreaded red ink top right corner with D-.

The stories have continued in my head but I dared not  put pen to paper. Fifty frustrating years later my partner challenged me to write one of the stories that she heard snippets of verbally from me. Add a story about 10 children under 12 who in 1926 entered the Daintree River with their parents and I couldn’t stop. I was hooked. But can I write?

Only you dear reader will ever be able to answer that question. I hope so.