Erk Down Under

Ronald Cartwright and his wife, Daisy, were smuggled out of Yorkshire by MI6, to get them out of the clutches of a Russian mole. With names changed to Donald and Elizabeth Watmough, they find themselves spirited away to Western Australia. Under the supposedly watchful eye of ASIO, Don turns their initial £50,000 into A$ millions.
Watmough befriends a police Inspector with the unlikely name of Hitchcock. They buy an ocean going ship and plan to steam to Melbourne. It ends in disaster, but introduces Don to a very wealthy BP tanker captain. Don takes a fancy to his wife, who owns a brand new Cessna and a hangar full of WWII aircraft.
Inspector Hitchcock begs a favour of Don, who uncovers a murderous surveyor. He has a penchant for doughnuts. Hitchcock forbids his wife, Hildegarde, to fly Watmough’s Tiger Moth.
The Watmoughs and their children move to Melbourne, where they meet the Bradshaws, a company of solicitors with the same surname as the Bradford solicitors, who befriended Ron Cartwright in 1959. Incredible coincidence? Don rubs up the Melbourne bigwigs.
ASIO suddenly get involved. For his sins, Watmough is coerced into spying at Consolidated Commonwealth Uranium in the Northern Territory. He uncovers a plot to steal uranium. Contrary to his expectations, not only does he get no credit, but he and Elizabeth are banished to Toowoomba, a country city in Queensland.
An acquaintance with the uncharacteristic name of Sebastian, spends years trying to uncover the whereabouts of Lasseter’s Reef, a seam of gold, vaguely, somewhere north of the Gibson Desert. He unwittingly runs foul of ASIO and once again ruins the Watmoughs’ chances of ever seeing England again.
The Yorkshire Erk is still taunted by spooks. Is this really the end of the Cartwright Saga? Rumours have it, that Cartwright was involved in a secret plot by ASIO, to overthrow an Australian ALP Prime Minister, during which, our hapless Erk came within a centimetre of losing his life. Only time will tell!