Rick Canhan
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Rick Canhan
Discovering more than the lost canopy buried in the desert
by Richard Canhan
“In the heart of the Simpson Desert, two brothers confront the past in search of more than a lost canopy”
Two brothers.
Two thousand dunes.
One unfinished story.
Gary and Rick Canhan head out into the heart of the Simpson Desert and along the isolated Madigan Line, chasing the ghost of a canopy left behind years earlier. But the real weight in the vehicle isn’t gear — it’s memory.
Raised in a UK orphanage, their childhood was marked by loss, trauma, silence, and survival. Decades later, with families of their own and the wisdom of grandfathers, they return to the harshest landscape in Australia — not simply to retrieve what was left in the sand, but to confront something that was buried far deeper.
The ground hog of endless kilometers over countless dunes, engines and patience strain. Where sand and mud swallow tyres. While the desert offers solitude and peacefulness, it offers no mercy for the unwary. And as mechanical failures threaten to end the journey, the past rises with equal force.
Against a beautiful backdrop of endless red dunes and vast desert skies, Redemption in the Desert is more than an outback expedition — it is a reckoning. A story of resilience, brotherhood, and two men determined to reclaim more than a lost canopy, they were equally determined to reclaim a piece of the youth that was taken from them.
Some journeys cross deserts.
Others cross decades.
This one does both.
“Officium Primum”
Latin - Duty First
Rick Canhan, Aust Army Veteran, Father-Grandfather and Author
Rick Canhan is an Australian Author, Army veteran, Justice of the Peace, father and grandfather, speaker, and advocate whose work is grounded in lived experience. Born in the UK in 1959, he spent part of his early childhood in institutional care—an experience that shaped a lifelong commitment to truth, accountability, and resilience. Following a diverse working life, Rick now focuses on writing and public advocacy. He supports people harmed in care, raises funds for veteran-focused initiatives, and advocates broadly for men’s health and wellbeing. His work centers on recognition, reform, and constructive change, with an emphasis on dignity, fairness, and long-term recovery. Measured, direct, and principled, Rick’s voice is guided by the belief that speaking truthfully—without exaggeration or malice—is essential to justice, healing, and ensuring that unheard voices are finally acknowledged.
Two short stories to ignite the imagination
Puzzled — Literary Thriller
Something is wrong, though nothing appears to be.
Puzzled is a quiet work of literary horror in which an ordinary moment begins to fracture. As familiar details subtly shift, the narrator is drawn into a tightening spiral of unease—where certainty erodes and meaning becomes dangerous.
The story explores the horror of misalignment: when the world refuses to behave as expected and the mind can no longer trust its own patterns. With restrained prose and mounting dread, Puzzled reveals how terror does not always arrive loudly, but seeps in through doubt, repetition, and the fear that reality itself has become unreliable.
Unsettling and precise, Puzzled lingers as a question that refuses to resolve.
Beneath The Southern Cross
Set in rural Australia, Beneath The Southern Cross centres on a sudden, destabilising incident that disrupts the fragile balance of everyday life and binds together those caught in its wake.
What begins as an ordinary day unfolds into crisis, forcing individuals and families to confront fear, responsibility, and the emotional weight of the past. As the aftermath ripples outward, relationships are tested, buried truths surface, and the characters must reckon with choices made in moments when there is no time to hesitate.
The Australian landscape looms large throughout the novel—beautiful, indifferent, and relentless—mirroring the inner lives of those who live and labour beneath it. Blending grounded realism with subtle, unsettling undertones, Beneath The Southern Cross explores how a single moment can alter the course of a life, and how meaning is forged not in the event itself, but in how it is remembered, endured, and carried forward.
This is an intimate, emotionally resonant novel about resilience, consequence, and the quiet, lasting impact of moments that cannot be undone.
