The Bridge at Koondrook

The Bridge at Koondrook. In December 1967 the Australian Prime Minister enters the surf at isolated Cheviot Beach, and is lost. His body is never found. History records this as a tragic accident, perhaps it is not? So starts ‘The Bridge at Koondrook’. The novel is a thriller that peels off the layers the history surrounding violent contemporary events. Australian Federal Police officer, Kate Austin, is unprepared to enter into a world of brutality and intrigue when two undercover police officers are found horrifically murdered in Darwin. Their deaths are connected to the theft of a cache of military weapons; weapons that seem to have fallen into the hands of bikers, recruited to Islamic Terrorism. Will drug money be used to finance terrorism? Consensus and political expediency aside, Kate is not so sure. The genesis of today’s events evolve from a chance meeting in the 1930’s in Central Australia in Stuart, the town that would become known as Alice Springs. Chika, a young girl of Japanese descent, meets James Wheeler, the son and heir to a rich and powerful dynasty. At the edge of the desert the legendary Harold Bell Lasseter is at the start of the Great Australian Gold Expedition. He befriends little Chika, she is given a gift. Eighty years later the gift will trigger dire events. The story follows Chika’s life, through War and internment and onto her life in the small town of Koondrook. ‘The Bridge at Koondrook’ also charts the lives of James Wheeler’s sons. John a pioneering geologist who has developed break through mineral survey technology and his twin brother Matthew, a narcissistic media mogul. When Wheeler’s Geological survey team are attacked it seems to be terrorism. It is only John’s wife, Anne, an American with a chequered history of mental instability, who sees it differently. She has the resources to boldly retell an old story of international intrigue and places the ultra secret Pine Gap Communication Facility at the heart of events. Were the murders in the 1960’s of three US Geological Survey workers, and Project Merino, the original Pine Gap codename, at the heart of the current turmoil? Kate Austin’s investigation becomes increasingly complex, and less defined as multiple scenario’s play out. Is she chasing a corporate crime that is being played out or, is this something else. The arm’s theft was only possible because someone sliced through the Defence Department’s firewalls as if they weren’t there and so not only is ASIO, the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation involved, but also the Americans who don’t want the contagion to spread. ‘The Bridge at Koondrook’ has lighter moments, but is at times violent and brutal. Kate Austin follows the trail, and the evolution of, three sadist killers. Bastian, a long dead German with links to the organisation that Nazi Germany created to revolutionise large scale phone tapping. There is Jonas, a psychopathic killer with a fetish for all things “Bond’ and his protégé Bridgette. Kate investigates events as the implausible becomes plausible, and even more frightening. Will she be able to put together the pieces before the cost is too high?