About the Author

Caroline Magerl; author, artist, illustrator and print-maker. Caroline immigrated to Australia as a young girl and spent the majority of her childhood at sea on her parents' yacht sailing the east coast of Australia. This lifestyle accommodated little in the way of possessions, and so she especially treasured the East German picture books gifted her by her Great Oma; "the two languages of imagery and words whose interplay had a profound impact on me". Caroline now lives on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia."The emmigration forms for leaving Germany listed a number of potential destinations to begin a new life. By way of being quite certain, my father ticked each box. In 1966, my mother, father and I began the long flight to Australia.My first impressions of Sydney were the sea of brick red roofs and the unrelenting blue of the sky. The house we lived in was divided into flats for migrants and itinerants. With us were sheep shearers from the bush and a salesman, who instead of laundering would burn his business shirts in the backyard at the end of the week.Perhaps it was proximity to the harbour, or his profession as a boiler-maker, that put the idea to build a yacht into my father's head. Either way, the vision of a life at sea took hold and we moved to a fibro house with a boat-sized yard on the fringes of the Sydney. Quite soon the frames of a 45-foot ketch were laid out; a toast rack. My father smiled and pointed to the bow where my cabin would be and to where the fish would swim past my window.It took four years of weekends for my parents to complete the hull, cabins and deck. Somewhat sparse inside and without an engine or masts, the yacht was launched into the Parramatta River. It was named Rosa-M, after my mother. My room had two round portholes, to see fish through.We explored the coast of New South Wales then travelled north to Queensland. The Rosa-M sailed all the way to Cairns, a city with lofty, sumptuously green hills topped by rolling clouds of mosquitoes. It was an exciting and also haphazard way of life, by the time I was fourteen I had attended ten different schools. The yacht was put up for sale a year later which heralded a difficult change for us all. After a brief stint in a hotel kitchen as a cook I enrolled in a commercial art course which initially led to freelancing work at various advertising agencies, and eventually a number of positions as a regular cartoonist for yachting magazines.My time at sea was inextricably tied to my life and I continued to sail whilst pursuing my art career. After an ocean crossing to New Zealand in 1988 and a particularly memorable year in the Shaky Isles, I returned to Queensland where an altogether different way of life presented itself. This new way of life took the form of a ramshackle wooden worker's cottage, which contained a reasonably attractive electrician. We married, and our daughter Jennifer arrived two years later.BubWhat with the sleepless ni

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