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Who is Francis Carver and where do we meet him in the story?
Francis Carver is the son of a military man and a naval commander. He was brought up in Hong Kong, so he’s the son of an expat. The father was very overruling in a very severe naval way, so they’ve fallen out. He’s been in prison on Cockatoo Island for 10 or 11 years, and when we meet him he’s three months out.

His love affair with Lydia began before before all that, and that’s probably what held him together while he’s been in prison, and now he’s come out. Because of his prison record, although he’s paid his dues, he’s still very much labelled as a convict, which is frustrating for him. He’s had to beg, borrow and steal.

He’s staying in New Zealand for Lydia primarily and the first time we meet him, he suggests they should go away and start again. But Lydia has other ideas which, probably against his better instincts, he agrees to. They have something of a Macbethian relationship in that she spurs him on.

For me, the inner life of Francis Carver has been about wanting to honour that love that he has for her, whilst also, to a large extent, betraying his own instincts.

What does gold mean within this story?
Gold represents hopes, dreams, aspirations but also greed, doom and death. The alchemical story of turning lead into gold is quite a good one. The gold that people find ultimately is not the external one but the internal one. That's the journey that interests me, the psychological journey that is more indicative of the human experience. If you earn it quickly, you lose it just as fast.