Author(s): Steve Matthews

Historical, political & military

Ted Watts' Diary is a coming-of-age love story.



An orphaned seven-year-old English boy arrives in Sydney to be adopted by his ne'er-do-well Aunt during the early 1900s. The story finishes 60+ years later, after we have followed Ted's tumultuous journey into manhood. Ted Watts' Diary has everything a ripping Australian yarn should have, and more: larrikins, mateship, humour, heroes and villains, whores and brothels, retribution, tears and laughter, thieves, spies, war and tender love.



Ted's difficult initiation into adulthood in Sydney leads him to Corowa, NSW where he meets and falls in love with Maddie 'Dimples'. Before he settles down, Ted wants to follow his destiny - go to war and return to Corowa a hero. Like most young men, he has a problem expressing himself, so he promises Maddie he will write his life story in the pages of an old bible given to him previously by a dying old soldier from the Boer War. Under-age, Ted enlists and Dimples promises to wait for him - forever, if she has to. He undertakes to return with the bible, complete with his life story.



Much of the story unfolds through the eyes of Gertie, a German woman living in Bremen who finds an old bible among the WW1 paraphernalia belonging to her deceased stepfather, Ernst Bauer. This point of view allows us to witness the Great War from the German perspective as well as the Allies'.