journalist | Author | phd candidate

Hi - it's Lainie Anderson here.  In 2009 I was asked to dedicate one of my Sunday Mail columns to the old Vickers Vimy aircraft at Adelaide Airport. I began researching the huge, open-cockpit WWI bomber and was amazed to discover it had been the first plane flown across the world from England to Australia in 1919. I couldn't believe the pilot, Adelaide-born Ross Smith, had been one of Australia's most decorated airmen of WWI (he'd even been Lawrence of Arabia's pilot!) The story was so awe-inspiring, yet so sadly forgotten, that I decided to write a book. But what kind of book? When I learned that one of the Vimy mechanics, Wally Shiers, was engaged to his sweetheart Helena before the war, I knew it had to be historic fiction. So I set about creating a boys own adventure - for girls!