Secret Fleets

Lynne Cairns is a Western Australian author and historian. While working as a graphic designer and fine artist, she completed a degree and a post graduate diploma in history, at Murdoch University. This led to employment as an assistant curator at the Western Australian Maritime Museum.While there, she researched and wrote Fremantle's Secret Fleets: Allied submarines based in Western Australia during World War II (WA Museum, 1995), and co-wrote (with Graeme Henderson) Unfinished Voyages: Western Australian Shipwrecks 1881-1900, (UWA Press, 1995). An expanded and updated edition of Fremantle's Secret Fleets was published in 2012 as Secret Fleets: Fremantle's World War II Submarine Base (Western Australian Museum, 2012).After leaving the Museum, she completed a Master of Arts degree. Her dissertation, 'Women's Work in the Swan River Colony, 1829-1850' researched the role of women in the early settlement of Western Australia.This interest is reflected in her historical novels Where Wild Black Swans are Flying, and (for young readers) Cast Away. Her latest novel, soon to be published, is a mystery set in 1890s Western Australia, in the goldrush town that was to become Kalgoorlie.Ms. Cairns lives in Western Australia with her husband. She enjoys researching history, writing fiction and poetry, and art.