Dr Rudyard Turnstone and the Beach of Promises by Trevor Gill

This one is close to home. Trevor Gill is a Yorke Peninsula author, a journalist and poet who lives on the coast here, and Dr Rudyard Turnstone and the Beach of Promises is set on the beach of a small South Australian coastal town much like our own.

Ruddy is a ruddy turnstone, a small migratory shorebird who flies the East Asian Australasian Flyway between Australia and the Arctic and back. He calls himself a flying doctor, not of medicines but of hope, passing on what generations of turnstones have taught him. On the beach he befriends Heysen, a blind boy who would rather be with the birds than anywhere else, and Grace, a girl working to reawaken the language of her ancestors, the Narungga people of Yorke Peninsula. Their friendship, and Ruddy's long journeys, carry a quiet message about looking after the natural places that all of us, people and creatures, depend on.

An uplifting, illustrated story for older children and families, with chapter illustrations by Marie Parsons and a cover painting by Allyson Parsons. A genuinely local book, by a local writer, about this stretch of coast.