The albatross pendant

If you’re wondering about the abalone shell albatross pendant Alicia is wearing on the cover of her memoir, it was a gift from Lennard Currie. His mother Mary found the original, along with other artefacts and coins, in a pewter tobacco tin in the back of a cave on the cliffs overlooking the Hutt River Pink Lake at Lucky Bay. Lennard thinks the original belonged to Gerrit de Waal, survivor of a shipwreck on the cliffs north of Kalbarri in 1712. He is convinced Gerrit was his ancestor.

When Mary presented the original to the Maritime Museum, Lennard had a copy made, using two shells from the Greenough River mouth—one for the base, the other for the outline of the albatross he glued to it. He gave the pendant to Alicia and she’s worn it ever since.

I thought that made for a good story—and gave the book cover an interesting look.