From Billabong to London

The year is 1914. For Norah Linton, the promise of voyage to England seems like a dream, but war has already reshaped her world back home at Billabong, the family's remote Australian homestead. Her brother Jim and the handsome Wally are desperate to enlist, but Wally's youth bars him from Australian military service. So the Lintons set sail for London, where the gates of enlistment might finally open. What begins as an adventure across the seas becomes a terrifying ordeal when their ship comes under attack from a German cruiser. Through porthole windows in the darkness, mysterious signals flash. Who is warning them of approaching danger? The answer could mean life or death for everyone aboard. Written in the early twentieth century, this is Australian adventure fiction at its most propulsive: a story of young people stumbling into history, of courage tested by war, and of the vast distance between the bush and the battlefields where everything changes.