The much-travelled battered black metal trunk, a legacy of many voyages, had not been opened for forty years and lay sitting on four bricks at the back of the dusty cellar... The heavy brass Yale padlock, fully two and a quarter inches wide, was tarnished and the type favoured by mariners a century earlier. It yielded noiselessly to the key and a little lubrication. The white steel hasp was pried free, and the steel bar slid back from the staples with some protest... dusty parcel lay between the folded khaki trousers and tunic of a soldier of the Great War. The black and faded creamy yellow shoulder patches has lost the freshness of colour of that time, but the brass letter A was prominent. Inside was an octavo-sized photo album with a frayed and faded green cover. The photographs looked of professional quality...

• Prologue
• H.D. Norman
• The Pearling Industry
• Birth of a Lugger, Death of a Diver
• The Economics of Pearling
• Mutiny on the Ethel, murder on the Mist
• The Broome Riot of 1920

• The Japanese Doctor
• Letters from the front, Gallipoli, Sinai and France
• Tropical Cyclones and Willy Willies
• A Pearler's Wife
• The Royal Flying Doctor Service, Broome
• Broome Air Raid and Carnot Bay - 1942
• Epilogue, Acknowledgments, Index