When my great-grandfather moved westward from the New England north-west region of Inverell in the early 1890s to our current property he built a homestead on one of two separate holdings. The property was called Mona and the original house was of mud-brick and cypress pine. This early building was made with the black soil mud found on the property with the bricks [...]
Anthony Doerrs All the Light We Cannot See cleverly interweaves the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner. Marie, a blind French girl flees with her father to Saint-Malo when the Germans occupy Paris. And it is her story that becomes entwined with that of German orphan Werner, whose genius with radios makes him an expert tracker [...]
Well Ive been digging around in the family archives again. This time searching for information from the 1950s for one of my works-in-progress. Opening boxes at our place is a bit like Christmas at times. You never know what gems youre going to discover. Authenticity is mandatory when youre writing bush stories with a historical [...]
Its probably twenty years since I first read The Shiralee which was released in the 1950s but the narrative still captivates and its been a joy to re-read. A shiralee is a swag, a burden, and in DArcy Nilands novel, Macauley's is Buster, his four year old daughter. In the novel Macauley takes the child [...]
Ishiguro wrote the brilliant The Remains of the Day (winner of the Booker prize) with the movie starring Anthony Hopkins receiving rave reviews, so I was interested to read this latest work if only for the authors leap across genres into fantasy literature. The Buried Giant is set post King Arthur in a Britain filled [...]
Our property is between the village of Boomi and the town of Mungindi, in NW NSW. It can be a lonely stretch of dirt road at times, at others, during peak seasons, extraordinarily busy. But you can bet that if you get a flat tyre, there won't be a soul around. Mungindi's an interesting place. It's situated on [...]
If you enjoy history ... Many of you know that all of my novels to date have relied heavily on the Alexander Family archives which date back over one hundred and twenty years and cover station life from the 1880s on. As you can imagine with such a rich resource my interest in history was [...]
When I began thinking about my new novel, The Great Plains, I was mindful of my own rural background and as with my previous works I wanted to be able to draw on rural Australia and our fascinating history. My aim was to write an epic narrative that told the story of two lands, two [...]
I'm reading a couple of books at the moment, both historical, both very different. Firstly, The King's Curse by Phillipa Gregory. This is part of the Cousins War Series and although it's highly readable and fascinating with the detail of the Tudor age and Henry VIII, my favourite remains The White Queen. The King's Curse [...]
A Dish of Wheat In the April of 1918 members of the 3rd Battalion 1st Division A.I.F were in action near the town of Strazelle, near the Belgium Woods, in the eastern area of the Western Front, France. Jim Sullivan from Castlevilla, Boomi and Fred Alexander of Murki (my grandfather), Boomi along with a Sergeant, [...]