Wallaby Lane: Stories behind the story

If you’ve read Wallaby Lane, you might be wondering how one earth a one-eyed goat came into the storyline! Here’s the inside scoop on the few little glimmers that helped me come up with this sweet little character.

In my 2020 novel (Bottlebrush Creek), I wrote about a goat breeder trying to barter a trailer-load of goats for building services, and it was such fun that I knew I wanted goats in a future book. Fast forward to 2024 and there’s multiple goats in Wallaby Lane.

But why one-eye, you might ask?

When I was a kid, my aunt was an egg farmer and dog breeder. After years of breeding perfect Jack Russell and Labrador pups, she had a puppy born with only one eye. While she couldn’t sell the pup, she didn’t want it euthanised either. Knowing our family loved animals, she offered it to us and Meg became a much-loved part of our menagerie. The empty eye-socket didn’t bother Meg, but it always attracted comments from visitors.

I also needed a reason for the goat to come into Jack’s periphery, so it worked well that the goat posed a problem for young trouble-maker, Sebastian. After rescuing the goat from the gallows, Seb needed Jack’s help to smuggle it off premises. You’ll have to keep reading to find out what happens next!

Initially I called the one-eyed goat Gunther, at my daughter’s request (she’s a fan of the Friends TV show), and that remained his name for multiple drafts. In the final edits, I decided to go one better and use the name for Logan’s trio of wandering bucks (along with Joey and Chandler). It’s only as I’m writing this blog post that I realise I never renamed the one-eyed goat. Oops!