Colin Macpherson -- about the author

Colin Macpherson, author of The Holy Well, and The Tide Turners, was born in Melbourne, Australia 'some time ago'. He has been a physicist, a teacher, an academic, a farmer, a boatbuilder, an aid worker, an editor, and a freelance writer. He has lived and worked in a number of different countries, and has several tertiary qualifications, including a PhD -- his thesis centring on the development of certain types of mathematical models.

Proud of his working-class roots -- his father was a stevedore (or 'wharfie' in Australian parlance) and his mother a shop assistant -- he believes his upbringing and early education in the now defunct 'technical-school' system was of great help in his wide-ranging adult pursuits, (the picture on the left shows him at the helm in one of the boats he built and sailed between islands in the Fiji group).

Always concerned about the state of the planet and those who inhabit it, one of his early publications was a unique database and book package called Goodbye Forever? which provided information and learning activities about threatened species of mammals.

Also, as the foundation editor of Our World Too -- a magazine for young people on the Pacific Island nation of  Samoa -- he focused on local and global environmental issues.

Colin has had many research and academic papers published over a wide range of subject areas, as well as several textbooks on how to explore scientific principles using readily available items rather than expensive equipment. He has also had many articles published in a variety of magazines and newspapers, the topics ranging from social commentary to technical 'how-to' pieces. His first novel, The Tide Turners, was published in 1999, and immediately established a following for his  fiction. Now, many years later ("I've been busy with other things"), his second novel, The Holy Well, has been published, and it promises to be even more popular than his first.

Finally, if you're wondering about the picture here, the author was asked to supply something he thought would be appropriate; his comment was, "This is me cooling off in a rain-filled 44 gallon drum in Samoa.  I'm reading to some friends who lived nearby. They seemed interested, so I wondered whether there might be a wider audience for my material."