It’s a while since I’ve blogged. I’ve no excuse other than being time poor like most people. I’m getting my teeth into book number 5 at the moment and becoming slightly stressed with a deadline looming… on the property front we’re still moving cattle around and watching the clouds roll in and roll out, yep still no decent rain. Harvest at least is over so now it’s back to monitoring water points and checking on stock.  I thought it was time to revisit the archives. This month I’m sharing a selection of magazines that I used for part of the research for Sunset Ridge.

oldmagsExcuse the close-up of the feet, the light was hitting me in the face when I came in from the paddock to take this shot. There are copies shown here of the 1935 Agricultural Gazette of NSW, a 1950s copy of the Pastoral Review, as well as one of my favourites, the Illustrated London News from 1916. When you’re writing historical novels primary source material is of the utmost importance and lucky for me much of what I need can be found in the Alexander archives; old paddock books and diaries from the 1880s, mail order catalogues from the 1920s as well as family oral history which provides a wealth of anecdotal information.sunday bk

Yesterday being a Sunday I spent the day writing, but one hundred years ago my great-grandparents and grandfather and his siblings were undoubtedly sitting together at some stage during the day, after church of course, reading The Sunday At Home. This religious tract (of the Anglican variety) shown above has every thing in it. A flick through this weighty tome dated 1911-1912 has pages filled with some really interesting short stories, illustrations, opinion pieces and advice from the Church. It is definitely more entertainment in content than religious however and no doubt gave the occupants of many remote stations at the time endless hours of enjoyment, when they weren’t playing the organ of course, yep we’ve got one of those too, along with a piano with brass sconces.organ What can I say I love old stuff.