Forbidden Frontier is loosely based on the real life of Charlotte Badger – where did the idea come from to turn Charlotte ’s life into a novel?

I read a short paragraph about Charlotte in James Belich’s Making Peoples and was immediately intrigued. Initially I hoped to write a biography but Charlotte proved to be tantalisingly elusive. Most of the known facts can be summed up in a few lines but by the time I’d realised this I was hooked, not only by Charlotte but by the world in which she found herself, so I decided to tell her story another way.

What research did you do about Charlotte Badger?

The archives and museums in Sydney were, of course, the first place to start and were wonderfully helpful. I began with finding references to Charlotte not only in official documents but also following up the many leads from other books that mentioned her. I also researched the era, working as much as possible from primary sources: letters, diaries, newspapers, paintings and sketches of the time. I particularly enjoyed the accounts of rowdy convict women, generally written by disapproving gentlemen, and a rambunctious heroine began forming in my mind. I walked the streets with early maps, trying to recreate the fledgling community in my mind and read numerous books which investigated the lives of convicts from a wide range of angles.  A visit to Old Sydney Town was a highlight of my trip to Australia .

I did not read any convict fiction however, as I didn’t want to be influenced by other novelists. As much as possible, I aimed to portray the colony from nineteenth century sensibilities as I had been particularly struck by the matter-of-fact acceptance of conditions in many of the contemporary writings. Much of what for them was normal, today makes us shudder and turn away.

Charlotte was actually a female pirate – that must have been fascinating to write about?

It was, but strangely difficult at the same time. What, in reality, would drive the mother of a young baby to take the drastic step of becoming a pirate? My journey began with the mutiny and I delved backwards into Charlotte ’s story to discover what combining factors would make her risk her life thus. That for me was the real story. Of course, all of this is fictitious. However, for the mutiny itself I tried to stay faithful to the official accounts which are far less dramatic than subsequent retellings. For me, the baldness of the facts precluded any temptation to imbue the scene with swash-buckling glamour.

Forbidden Frontier is a grand historical adventure, featuring some wonderfully flawed and realistic characters – can you tell us a bit more about these characters who accompany Charlotte aboard the convict ship Earl Cornwallis?

Charlotte is in many ways the central character of the novel. The challenge was to create a character who possessed all the vices convict women were accused of, yet still make her sympathetic to a modern audience. She’s feisty and tough, a born survivor. Though not immediately apparent, she also has her own code of honour and is capable of a loyalty so deep that she will in fact risk all for those she loves.

Nathan Wesley, the irrepressible young minister, is the idealistic face of colonization and gives voice to all the dreams and disillusionment experienced by many involved in setting up the colony. The struggle to maintain his faith in a seemingly godless land, and his marriage to his emotionally inaccessible wife, Elizabeth, are further complicating factors in his life.

Elizabeth is the most remote character. Her story is told for the most part in the third person for her life is one of dissemblance as she hides her true sexual nature not only from others but also from herself. It is only in Fiji that Elizabeth finally learns to speak in her own voice.

Can you tell us about the various locations in the novel?

I think what is most striking about the locations is that while the land remains, almost all traces of the communities described in the book have disappeared.  Such was the tenuous impermanence of their lives at that time.

Very little of Sydney in 1800 remains. The houses, windmills, docks have all gone. I went to the basement of the Post Office to look at the Tank Stream bed and it was a strangely poignant moment.  Early sketches show a bridge spanning this stream and suddenly that tiny, tentative settlement felt very real. The heart of it still there in the bedrock of the modern city.  Of course, I love the Rocks although most of the buildings there were built long after Charlotte had left. 

Even today, getting to Rangihoua in New Zealand is difficult - the readiest access being by sea.  The green hills drowse in the sun at the far reaches of the Bay of Islands and a memorial marks the place where Samuel Marsden came to visit some eight years after Charlotte ’s arrival. He makes no mention of her in his diary so presumably she had already moved on by then. I lived in the Bay of Islands for four years and it is an area very close to my heart.

Fiji , for me, is the most exotic location. I was lucky to find a diary written by a minister and though he lived there some forty years later, it captures the turbulent responses of an Englishman to a cannibalistic society.  It is here that Nathan and Elizabeth, far removed from any echoes of England , are finally stripped of their last defenses and forced to confront both themselves and their relationship with all its flaws, but also its strengths.

The fine line between fact and fiction is one widely debated in the literary world, how did you approach this in Forbidden Frontiers?

To begin with, I simply immersed myself in the research. I landed up with files full of notes and a number of well-thumbed books on my shelves.  The hardest part was to decide when I felt confident enough to leave the security of research and begin the novel itself – always a leap of faith. When the characters in my head became more clamorous than my urge to research further, I set my files to one side and picked up my pen.

Writing the book became a fascinating exercise in joining the threadbare facts, like dots, to create a picture. Of course, other people telling Charlotte ’s story would join the dots very differently, and use a completely different palate. Such is the joy of writing fiction.  We write not necessarily of how it was but how it might have been. Having said that, even factual accounts differ widely. Books about Marsden, for example, vary hugely in their appraisal of the man and his worth.

I found writing about the indigenous peoples the most difficult. In Forbidden Frontier they are portrayed only through English eyes and are not in any way meant to represent the actual societies. Diaries and letters of the time abound in stereotypes which I depicted while at the same time trying to show the flimsiness of these judgements.

I tried at all times to be as accurate as possible with the historical settings and was particularly concerned about my portrayal of actual people such as Te Pahi and Marsden.  But in the end, the heart of the novel is driven by the characters and they are all fictitious, even Charlotte .

What are the central themes of Forbidden Frontier?

Dislocation is a major theme; the different responses to alien lands.  Survival was always tenuous and the book explores the different ways in which the characters adapted to their new surroundings with varying degrees of success.  Linked with this is the notion of transience. As I say, it’s almost impossible to find the worlds Charlotte once inhabited.  

Another strong theme is the nature of love; not only romantic love but also love for children, for friends and for God. All the characters are shaped by their changing attitudes towards these different aspects of love throughout the book.