Trumped Up Corella

Robert Maddison

Another Jack Miller Eco-Thriller

A fire in August 1991 at the Coode Island Hazardous Chemicals Storage Facility in inner Melbourne is the inspiration for this roller coaster of political manoeuvrings, corruption and violence—all designed to see the facility relocated to a site which just happens to be home for a critically endangered species—the Orange-bellied Parrot—of which there are less than fifty left in the wild.

The agenda is simple—relocate the hazardous chemicals facility and use that site to build Australia's mega-stadium—the sporting mecca of the Southern hemisphere, ready and waiting to host the World Cups of cricket, rugby and soccer.

The stakes are high and so is the determination of investigative journalist Jack Miller and his friends as they fight an increasingly desperate sports media mogul, his political puppets and their henchmen.
Will big business triumph and another species perish? Or will Jack and his friends find a way to outsmart them?

 

About the Author

Robert Maddison is the pen name of Dr Bill Phillips, a former senior executive in the Federal environment bureaucracy, then, for three years, Deputy Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands based in Switzerland. For nearly 20 years he has been a freelance consultant and CEO of the not-for-profit organisation, RiverSmart Australia. In short, he's seen it all (or almost!) and is now using these real life experiences to help shape eco-thrillers: a sub-genre with a focus on corruption in the environmental arena—a seemingly untapped market. His first eco-thriller was 'Flood Country' (also published by Vivid) and this is the second in an intended trilogy. While these are works of fiction some of the background information on which the storylines are created is based on real life situations and scenarios.

Born in Lake Cargelligo in western NSW, Bill Phillips now resides in Canberra although he spends lots of his time working in rural areas with landholders, government agencies and community groups with an interest in river and wetland management.

Bill Phillips previously published scientific works and the popular science book Koalas: the little Australian's we’d all hate to lose in 1988. Since then he has progressively become a specialist science communicator, working as a workshop facilitator and editor/compiler of scientific reports and other documents—converting them to plain English. Today he uses these skills for working extensively with media contacts to promote the work of RiverSmart in both print and electronic media, in maintaining several web sites etc.

Fiction writing is a way to entertain an audience while also passing on some insights into the realities that go on behind the scenes in the sometimes ugly politics of the environment.

 

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