Author(s): Melody Horrill

Biographies

The compelling, heart-warming story of how a traumatised young woman found peace through her friendship with an injured dolphin called Jock. When Melody Horrill began communications at the University of South Australia she was a troubled and lost young woman, hiding behind a carefully crafted exterior. She had experienced a lifetime of emotional and physical trauma mainly at the hands of her violent father. Even after she and her mother escaped, he continued his campaign of abuse even as his family tried to hide from him. When Melody was in her teens, he stabbed her mother in the face and then tried to take his own life by cutting his throat. He'd been jailed for the savage attack. Eventually he killed himself, leaving a note saying how much he hated Melody and her brother, and a garage full of homemade weapons, each with the name of his children and wife on them. One day Melody volunteered to help her university lecturer monitor a pod of river dolphins that lived in the waters of Port Adelaide. There for the first time she encountered Jock, a solitary dolphin with a maimed fin, who lived apart from the highly social pods. Melody was to form a bond with Jock that gave her the key to freeing herself from the demons of her own past, and begin a long-term mission to try to save the river dolphins. In this book she details her extraordinary friendship with a wild dolphin and the significant impact he and the other dolphins had on helping her heal.