Travelling with only a change of clothes in an old pillow case, a typewriter & rusty speargun, Pinney's journey through the West Indies & Pacific in 1962 is alive in this traveller's tale of high seas, close tropical coasts, fishermen, bars & women and men of 'interesting character'. Intertwining arrests and close escapes, love, lust, loss, moonshine liquor, deportation & stowaways amongst lush landscapes and island communities from Guadeloupe to the New Hebrides, This is Pinney's lyrically written homecoming journey after 15 years on the road, arriving finally in Australia. Originally...

Johnno's illicit diary is from one man's attempt to record a slender thread of truth in the whole tangled fabric of the Wau-Salamaua fight; and it was all in tiny, cramped writing. You can hardly read it; I had good eyes then. And now it's starting to fade and discolour, and the binding has rotted; and I know it doesn't dovetail with a lot of glorifying bull written by patriotic war historians, but to my knowledge no one else kept any personal notes of those times, so I've had some rooster edit out the rubbish and knock the remainder into shape, and here it is.