Hembury Books Publishes Fiction And Non-Fiction Books.
Paul Dufficy
Paul Dufficy was the fifth child born to an Irish Catholic family in suburban Sydney. Emerging relatively unscathed from a strict Catholic education, he was ready to learn more about the world – including what to wear and how to navigate romance. With little success at home on both fronts, he went to Indonesia in 1973, returning with a lifelong love of travel and, importantly, a new wardrobe. In the late 70s, he started writing about music and was the one of the first Australian rock journalists to send rock music and cultural dispatches from Tokyo in 1980.
Trained as a primary school teacher, Paul has worked in Australia and overseas, including in Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan. Returning to Australia in 1983, he earned a qualification in teaching English as an additional language which he taught throughout Western Sydney and later at the University of Sydney.
While at university, Paul wrote numerous academic papers and in 2005 published Designing Learning for Diverse Classrooms. Now he writes for various journals on travel and music. In 2019, he accompanied his wife, Carmel, to Thailand where he started to write his collection of memoiristic stories, Fingers Crossed. When not writing, Paul documents the street art of Sydney’s inner-west and hosts walking tours of Harry Seidler’s architecture in Sydney.
Fingers Crossed
by Paul Dufficy
Because the greatest journey isn’t around the world. It’s on the road to becoming.
As a young Irish Catholic boy growing up in suburban Sydney, Paul Dufficy’s world was shaped as much by the rigours of boarding school as by dreams of life beyond the familiar.
Those dreams carried him across Asia—from bustling cities and remote villages to classrooms in Japan and, improbably, the jungles of the Philippines during the filming of Apocalypse Now. Along the way he found lifelong friendships, unexpected mentors, moments of danger, and a soundtrack that never stopped playing.
But beneath the travel, humour and adventure lies a deeper story.
Fingers Crossed is about the slow, untidy process of becoming a man—and, more importantly, becoming a good person. It is a story shaped not by certainty or bravado, but by love, loss, faith, doubt and the quiet determination to keep moving forward. It asks what survives when youthful dreams collide with reality, and how curiosity, kindness and resilience can triumph over fear and regret.
These stories offer no easy answers. Instead, they celebrate the unexpected lessons found on the roads we travel and the remarkable people who quietly change us along the way.
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