So Nick Williams, last year trawler skipper, now head of a tiny company going down the gurgler, finds himself with a Dutch flagged vessel in Townsville, trying to get work on the Australian coast. Locked out by the unions and the bureaucrats, his situation rapidly becomes desperate. Money is non-existent. Creditors are mounting. Stress.
Enter Angie (from PURI PURI) who is sent north to interview Nick as director of the prawn ship company. Given the intensity of their Kavieng romance and their disastrous bust-up, this is one assignment she definitely does not want. She resists temptation and Nick’s attempt to re-kindle their love affair.
With the capriciousness often attributed because of her gender (not by me, of course) to Lady Luck, that evasive lady smiles on Nick and his partners.
After several months of a learning curve as steep as the Apollo lift-off, Nick secures a charter from a major U.S. multi-national. The ship is running cold goods from Sydney to Bougainville to feed the rapidly growing workforce employed in the new copper mine an Panguna, in the mountains behind Kieta.
A lucrative charter, the syndicate’s fortunes rapidly turn around.
Even then Nick doesn’t learn.
JOHN BELL BOOKS 