Breakwater
Rowland Walker
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Our Price: AUD$31.95 (USD$)*
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 USD$5.99
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Synopsis
At a time of heightening weather extremes and rising sea levels, this was a winter of savage gales...
Pete Kirkman knew the deal was too good to be true, but he went ahead anyway, sacrificing his own morality and buying the boat of his dreams. Now, his beloved yacht is a wreck.
Snatched seconds too late off the needle-sharp rocks of the Bingi Shoals by one of the new, high-tech, all-weather Federal Rescue Cutters, she is dragged, close to sinking, through the maelstrom of surf into the sanctuary of the Le François River on the southern New South Wales coast.
But it was on the long, slender mast, torn out of her when she rolled on the barway, and now lying somewhere under the surf, that the isotope had been hidden.
Mysteriously, Larry Bellowes, Kirkman's friend and crewman, lies dying of radiation sickness in hospital.
Trapped inescapably in a spiral of escalating violence, Kirkman joins forces with Jellico, Unit Commander of the Le François Rescue Cutter, and John Burne, Australian Federal Police Senior Investigator, to hunt down their common enemy, Koh, a ruthless and driven North Korean arch-terrorist, who Kirkman unwillingly smuggled into Australia on his yacht.
But what is Koh's link with the isotope, and can Jellico's superb seamanship get them through the next winter onslaught in time to prevent Koh from creating the ultimate nuclear nightmare?
About The Author
Born in Cheltenham in England, Rowland Walker first went to sea when he was four, and was skippering a small passenger ferry by the time he was fifteen. At seventeen he joined the Royal Navy and received his Commission, seeing action in many peacetime trouble spots.
With wider horizons calling, he started delivering yachts all over the world, ending up in Papua New Guinea and then Australia. Securing his Master's Certificate, he then worked for many years in the offshore oil industry. After completing a Bachelor Degree in Teaching, and then a Bachelor of Education, majoring in Communications, at the University of Technology, Sydney, he joined the Australian Maritime College in Northern Tasmania for three years as a Lecturer in Navigation and Seamanship.
Having written or illustrated for many publications, including Yachting World (London), The Islander (Isle of Wight, UK), Lae Post (PNG), Post Courier (PNG), Island Trader (PNG), and the Journal of the Royal Naval Sailing Association (UK), to name a few, Rowland wrote the last seven chapters of Breakwater pounding to windward in the middle of the Great Australian Bight after the call of the sea pulled him back to his beloved deep-sea tugs.
Rowland lives, writes and sails out of Northern Tasmania, with his wife, Gail and his sea-dog, Bobby Longlegs.
From The Book
Twenty-five miles to the east-north-east of Garfish at the remote lighthouse station on an outcrop of wind-scoured rock on Gabo Island, the part-time maintenance engineer had awoken with a start to the unfamiliar pressure on his eardrums, as the first rush of wind swept over the light tower and the adjoining empty 'keeper's cottages. His wife, too, came awake with the sudden, high-pitched singing of the radio aerial lines that stretched across the tussocky grass towards the small steel terminal pylon.
They had seen several trawlers from the port of Eden sail close past the island before sundown, heading to the grounds to the south of Gabo, close to the continental shelf, hoping for a couple of profitable shots or two before the wind switched south and the sea got really 'set up'.
But the front had arrived too early for any safe fishing, the Met office somehow having underestimated the severity and the speed of the storm. So the engineer put another call through to the Sydney Maritime operator whom he knew well, to let him know that it was already blowing seven bells and he might perhaps put that out for the benefit of the small ships straight away, for someone out there was going to get a hammering before the night was out.
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