The Dolphin Who Saved Me, Melody Horrill
The Dolphin Who Saved Me, Melody Horrill
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The Dolphin Who Saved Me
How An Extraordinary Friendship Helped Me Overcome Trauma and Find Hope

Author: Melody Horrill

Narrator: Cat Gould

Unabridged: 8 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/26/2023


Synopsis

"An inspiring book about love in its purest form."—JANE GOODALL, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace

When Melody Horrill arrived at university she was a troubled and lost young woman, hiding behind a carefully crafted exterior. She had experienced a childhood of emotional and physical trauma mainly at the hands of her violent father that was as damaging as it was brutal.

One day Melody volunteered to help her lecturer monitor pods of river dolphins nearby. 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 their extraordinary friendship was the start of a long-term mission to try to save the river dolphins.

Beautifully written and filled with insight and compassion, Melody's memoir details her life-changing friendship with the river dolphins, and how Jock helped her to heal.

About Melody Horrill

Melody Horrill is an award-winning Australian journalist, television presenter, and documentary producer with more than twenty years' experience in broadcast media both in Australia and overseas. Melody also cofounded a not-for-profit to raise public awareness about South Australia's Port River Dolphins and their environment. This helped lead to the creation of Australia's first Dolphin Sanctuary in the mid-2000s.

Melody is well known in Southern Australia for her passionate writing and filming about the wild dolphins in South Australia's polluted Port River. One of her many documentaries-A Dance with a Dolphin-was broadcast nationally and then the across the world on CNN, with Melody presenting it from the US.

As a broadcast journalist, Melody specialized in writing and presenting environment and science feature stories for many Australian TV news networks. She was also the South Australian Correspondent for CNN's International World Report. She is an honorary member of CNN's International Professional Program.

Melody also presented the weekday weather reports on two television networks for well over a decade and won the Better Hearing Australia Award for Best Presenter along with the Archbishop's Citation for Outstanding Journalism. She was also a finalist in Australia's Voiceless Awards.

Melody has since relocated to Melbourne and left the media but has continued campaigning for the dolphins. For the past six years she worked as a media and communications manager for the Australian government, where she won an Australia Day Merit Award for her work during the devastating 2019-2020 Bushfires.

In June 2021, concerned about the plight of her beloved dolphins, she wrote a feature story for the Australia's national newspaper-The Australian, where she opened up about how the dolphins helped her heal from personal trauma. The success of the article led to her penning A dolphin called Jock.

Melody has authored the book to encourage those who have experienced domestic violence not to give up hope. Her own biggest hope is that we can learn how creatures like dolphins live in harmony with their environment-and that we as humans can follow suit.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sharon

Melody Horrill’s family life had been dysfunctional with bouts of violence. She knew what it felt like to be in constant fear, but she never felt or understood love. For the first time in a long time, Melody was excited as she was going out onto the Port River to visit dolphins with one of her unive......more

Goodreads review by Kylie

An incredible autobiography about a young girl, her violent and traumatic and abusive childhood. How she navigated her way through life, and the gems of people and animals she has met among the way that has helped her to stay grounded and stay focused on life. Her relationship with her Horse Eddie, h......more

Goodreads review by Dale

Melody Horrill's memoir is both beautiful and distressing, but ultimately also contains a shimmer of hope. Let's start with the beautiful. The beautiful is the lyrical descriptions of the dolphins, of light on the water, of the orchids at Singapore as Melody, her parents her brother Mark make their......more

Goodreads review by Andrew

This is not an 'I'm a famous person' autobiography, although the author is well known in her home town of Adelaide, Australia. Rather, it's the very personal and deeply affecting story of a girl growing up in the shadow of an abusive father, navigating without a map through wrenching incidents and a......more