Life on Bosun Island off the coast of tropical Queensland appears to be ticking along quite nicely until the day Cocomama arrives – a little old-lady in a muddy green smock who drops from nowhere, into Merlin Merryweather’s lily-covered pond. From that moment on, chaos ensues. For generations, the island has lived in the shadow of a persistent rumour: the lost treasure of the Bosun Bird, a sailing ship loaded with Peruvian gold that vanished in the early 1880s. Most locals have long dismissed the story as folklore. But Cocomama’s unusual arrival stirs something in the island’s memory. Old secrets shift. Odd clues surface. And suddenly, the treasure feels less like legend and more like unfinished business. As the hunt gathers pace, Bosuntown’s wonderfully eccentric residents are drawn into the mystery: high-voltage twin sisters keeping watch from the lighthouse, a priest preparing for an epic flood, a musician with a tragic past, and a cast of offbeat locals who know far more than they first admit. Meanwhile, the island’s friendly little volcano begins to rumble. As fiction, folklore and buried truths begin to blur, one thing becomes impossible to ignore: somewhere in the chaos, the treasure of the Bosun Bird may still be waiting.
