Fourteen-year-old Colm Bell and his 11-year-old sister Lydia wake to the smell of smoke and the sound of gunfire -– raiders are attacking their home. They grab their backpacks -– prepacked for such an emergency -– and head to the tunnel and the hills, following the escape route they have practised every day for their young lives. They don’t look back.

This is a futuristic novel set in Australia when the earth has been plundered and natural resources depleted. Society has broken down completely, and small groups of people live in suspicion, desperately hording their meagre supplies.

Colm and Lydia are part of a generation of children who have never seen rain. As they wander through this Mad Max landscape, moving north to where they hope to meet up with their father, they hear of a great underground fire that is slowly incinerating the earth. They learn of the Wish Kin – people who are said to have the power to heal the earth at an event called the Rekindling. And they are captured by the Clan – a sinister group determined to rule the land and its people.

This is a haunting, lyrical story –- of children abandoned to a planet that no long sustains life, their journey alone through incredible peril, and the realisation of the part they must play in this brave new world.

Joss Hedley grew up on the South Coast and is the recipient of two residential awards from Varuna, The Writers’ House, in Katoomba. She lives now in Sydney where she tutors in performance studies at university. The Wish Kin is her first novel.

These are some photos that I took of the Anzac Bridge and surrounds, and in the Sydney CBD.

The building facade that you can see behind the Dymocks building will only be visible from the street for a few more months whilst the Mid City Centre is rebuilt.

Surfers at Torquay

Looking towards Jan Juc and Bells Beath

The Twelve Apostles

Here are some photos that I took on a road trip down to Melbourne and along the Great Ocean Road, in August 2007.

The Great Ocean Road is absolutely beautiful — stunning scenery, and miles of twisty and hilly roads that is great fun to drive.