Trevor Fing, born in Moree in 1953, moved with his family to Lake Macquarie when he was eleven; the proximity of Aeropelican awakened a love of flying. He earned his HSC (from Swansea High) in 1971, and was married in 1973. He and his wife Lynette, living lakeside in Belmont, developed a successful chain of retail fashion stores. Trevor was an enthusiast not only for the business but also for physical experience: high performance cars and trail-bikes; scuba and water-skiing; sky-diving, ultralite aircraft and helicopters; bushcraft, archery and guns. He became a qualified pilot of both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and a qualified Private Investigator. He and his wife have three sons, and he was even planning a book—but not this book!—when the law stepped into, or on, their busy life.

‘I do not claim to be an angel, and have often skirted the edges of the law,’ Trevor admits. An enthusiastic gun-collector, in 1985 he found his Belmont home raided by the police and his collection of (mainly unlicensed) firearms confiscated. In 1994 he was found guilty of breaching a different kind of law, in a much-publicised attempt to defraud the Land Titles Office. Shortly afterwards, another firearms charge added to his sentence. Finally, in circumstances not wholly dissimilar to those described in Heaven’s Gate, Trevor was, he strenuously asserts, ‘set up’ with 500g of speed. He was advised to plead guilty, with a prospect of leniency, but was committed to two years and nine months, cumulative upon his other sentences. It should be noted that Trevor, a devotee of physical fitness, disapproves of any using or dealing of drugs and avoids them all, including alcohol and nicotine.

Since 1996, in this fourfold cluster of sentences, Trevor has served time in several jails and correctional institutions, including Maitland, Long Bay, Parramatta, Lithgow, Cessnock, Grafton and Windsor. Throughout his years in prison, his wife, mother and sons have stood by him: he is very conscious that the family outside is sharing his notoriety. His own ‘Heaven’s Gate’ (release date) is February 2004.

Trevor began to write an early version of Heaven’s Gate in Cessnock in 1997. His expertise with the technology of guns, flying, and intrigue—and survival in jail—is unmistakable, but he was also determined to make his book a human story of emotion, mutual pain and mutual healing. Many lonely jail-weeks were devoted to drafting and re-drafting before the book landed on the Catchfire Press table in May 2000.