Coral Reef Castaway by Peter Hallard.
 
Australia's Great Barrier Reef, with its scores of uncharted islands, and its pearl beds to tempt the diver, has also sharks, sting-rays and the deadly stone-fish as guardians of the Gold Lip oyster's riches. These are the ingredients for this fascinating adventure story for young people.
 
Con Murray, a sixteen-year-old steward aboard a pleasure schooner, is swept overboard and saves his own life by swimming to a small coral reef islet. There he falls in with a strange character, Ginty, sole survivor of a pearling lugger wrecked on the Reefs twenty years before. The arrival of Con gives Ginty the chance he has waited for: to collect pearls from a bed he and his partners laid down in the 30's. Joining forces, Con and Ginty return to the mainland with money to spend from their first pearl, but old Ginty's tongue wags too freely and soon there are human sharks in the hunt for the pearls.
 
The action which follows provides a tense and exciting story, makes a hero of Con, and reveals a new side to the character of old Ginty. There is an unexpected and gripping climax to this colourful, dramatic and humorous story of adventure on the Great Barrier Reef.
 
Illustrated by Terence Greer