Yoohoo! It’s the publication day today of Bold Ben Hall, my middle-grade novel about the famous/infamous bushranger, as seen through the eyes of Lily Jordan and Sam Turner, two (fictional) young people of his time. Published by Walker Books Australia as the launch title in their new Our History series, it was an absolutely engrossing novel to write, and I hope readers will find it similarly engrossing!

In this novel, I wanted to present Ben Hall’s story in a way which reflects the very different perspectives through which people of the time saw him and his arch-enemy Sir Frederick Pottinger. But it also invites you, the reader today, to make up your own mind, like Lily and Sam try to—who’s the hero, who’s the villain, or do they each have a bit of both?

My main characters Lily, Sam and their families and friends are fictional, but several of the people who appear in this novel are real historical figures, and I have based their descriptions and doings on documents and sources of the time. These historical figures include not only Hall and Pottinger, of course, but also the members of Hall’s gang, Mickey Burke and the three Johnnies—Gilbert, Vane and O’Meally—as well as the landlords of the Canowindra Hotel, Billy and Rose Robinson, and French-born Forbes businessmen Auguste Nicolas and Joseph-Bernard Reymond. As well as doing a lot of research in books and online, I visited Canowindra, Carcoar, Eugowra and Escort Rock (where Frank Gardiner and his gang pulled off the famous gold raid) Bathurst, Forbes (including Ben Hall’s grave) and the surrounding countryside to get a feel for ‘Ben Hall country’, which proved to be both interesting and inspirational. I particularly want to acknowledge the kind help and useful information I received from staff at the Forbes Library and Forbes Visitor Centre, as well as the archivists of the Forbes Family History Group, which helped me to build an even fuller picture of Ben Hall and his times. Later, a visit to the fascinating Cobb and Co Museum in Toowoomba, Queensland, greatly helped in fleshing out the coaching background.