I live in Melbourne, but I’ve spent time in the Kimberley and Broome, Fitzroy Crossing and Darwin, working with kids in schools and communities up there. I loved meeting and talking with all the kids, and there would be different gangs of friends and brothers and sisters who I’d see around the town - maybe at the shop, or at the footy oval, down at the river, or at the playground. The kids would often be different ages, colours, shapes and sizes, and there was usually at least one dog who was part of their gang. They would be off on their own adventures. So the characters in the book have come from meeting kids who live up in that part of Australia. The book isn’t set in any particular town, and the illustrator, Felicita, also brought her own memories and feelings about the Australian country when she illustrated the book, but in my mind it’s somewhere in northern Australia.

I often seem to write books where something or someone gets lost!  Arno’s horse was originally a truck, based on my cousin who when we were kids would insist on taking several small Matchbox cars to the beach and one would often end up buried and just when we were all ready to go home, we’d all have to stop and look for it. But after talking with the old stockmen around the Fitzroy Crossing area, I changed the toy to a horse, and the story then developed in new and different ways. My own father had recently died and I was thinking about how sometimes with people we love, we can still feel them near even when they’re gone. Sometimes we feel this through dreaming. I know I did in the months after my dad died. I used to dream about him often, and it made me feel connected to him.