...And We'll Meet Now and Then

Rural reporter and cattleman, Ned Barron, has been banging away at mining companies for years so he’s not pleased when he arrives at a Queensland country town on assignment and finds the place booked out by the so-called Coal Queen, Laura Barnett, head of Barnett Mining and Australia’s richest woman. In the local pub he’s approached by one of her staff and told not to approach Miss Barnett under any circumstances. Amused, he replies by tipping his dinner over the minion’s head, buys another and then leaves to sleep on the ground beside his truck parked outside. Then he writes a story, lampooning Miss Barnett and her companies. She sues him and his publisher. Ned’s not worried but everyone else is. He’s just taken up with Dr. Sally Lancaster, who, like Ned, wanders the West as a locum and they begin an intermittent romance. Ned is convinced he’s in love with her and Sally responds. Then the beautiful Laura turns up at his home and offers him a job as a personal assistant, tempting him with the opportunity to do something about the mining industry as he’s been preaching for years. He refuses but, against all his instincts, stays to talk and finds that Laura, aged only 25, obviously needs help in running her big company her way.He accepts and goes to Perth to live and work with her. Laura quickly falls in love with him and pushes him to respond. But Ned has Sally waiting and finds himself torn between the two beautiful women…..

Rural reporter and cattleman, Ned Barron, has been banging away at mining companies for years so he’s not pleased when he arrives at a Queensland country town on assignment and finds the place booked out by the so-called Coal Queen, Laura Barnett, head of Barnett Mining and Australia’s richest woman. In the local pub he’s approached by one of her staff and told not to approach Miss Barnett under any circumstances. Amused, he replies by tipping his dinner over the minion’s head, buys another and then leaves to sleep on the ground beside his truck parked outside. Then he writes a story, lampooning Miss Barnett and her companies. She sues him and his publisher. Ned’s not worried but everyone else is. He’s just taken up with Dr. Sally Lancaster, who, like Ned, wanders the West as a locum and they begin an intermittent romance. Ned is convinced he’s in love with her and Sally responds. Then the beautiful Laura turns up at his home and offers him a job as a personal assistant, tempting him with the opportunity to do something about the mining industry as he’s been preaching for years. He refuses but, against all his instincts, stays to talk and finds that Laura, aged only 25, obviously needs help in running her big company her way.He accepts and goes to Perth to live and work with her. Laura quickly falls in love with him and pushes him to respond. But Ned has Sally waiting and finds himself torn between the two beautiful women…..

Roland Humphries lives near the sea in Queensland, Australia not far from where he was born and was trained as a newspaper reporter. After training, he joined a metropolitan morning daily as a general news reporter and sub-editor. A few years later he moved to Papua/ New Guinea to work as a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In those years he covered the search for Michael Rockefeller, son of then Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York; and the invasion of Dutch West New Guinea, now Irian Jaya, by Indonesian paratroops. He also witnessed the handing over of the country to Indonesia by the United Nations. He returned to Australia for some leave before joining the south-east Asian office but was offered a position in the Queensland Government and stayed there until he took early retirement to fish and write.