The Volcano’s Wife

Amalia marries Cecil in 1933 after a lightning five-day shipboard courtship. She is catapulted from sleepy Lismore in Australia to the wild heart of Papua New Guinea, walking the trail with convicted murderers to her first home, Kokoda, where she erected its first Australian flag.

Amalia and Cecil raised their two children in a land of serenity and great beauty, and came to love the people they lived amongst. This is Amalia’s story.

A remote station, Higaturu, is Paradise to Cecil, District Commissioner. But Paradise becomes an Inferno when the family is torn apart by implacable forces. In 1951 Mount Lamington explodes, blasting thousands to extinction. The violent eruption causes unprecedented destruction and brings about a fundamental change, both to the scorched landscape and to the traumatised survivors.

It is also a gut-wrenching account of a child’s memories. In the face of onrushing annihilation all she could do was scream. Scream she did. What did it mean, this calamity that destroyed her family? Would growing up provide an answer? This is also her story.