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Category Archives: Stories from the past
These are fictionalised stories based on yarns I’ve heard over the years from my father and other older Australians. I’ve tried to tell them through the eyes, and with the values of, the people who told them to me rather than the eyes and values of today.
Some of these stories may be confronting if for no other reason but that they tell parts of Australian history many of us would prefer to forget; for that I offer no apology.
If we do not accept the truth of our past how can we ever learn from it to guide our future.
Away back when
Pair of boots, Dryza-bone and an old slouch hat on a rainy Spring morning that’s where it’s at. Walking at Dawn with the rain’s all around, cosy and dry with the rainfalls sweet sound. Brings back younger days when I’d … Continue reading →
Out-foxing the fox
He was only in his thirties, but already the wrinkles in his weather-beaten face ran like chasms down his cheeks. Bruce was a bushman and everything about him was Aussie bush; his long, easy stride ate up the miles and … Continue reading →
Too young for 1, too broken for 2
Too Young 2069 Words I was too young for WW1, just after it finished I turned 10; being the ‘after-thought baby’ all my brothers went with the Light Horse but I was just a kid. By the time ’39 came … Continue reading →
Out West
I’d never been this far from home, and I’d definitely never been anywhere so big and open before; up in the mountains, where I come from, you never see distances like these. Except from a couple of spots right on … Continue reading →
Rabbitto
Every day, about lunch time, the truck came by for its daily collection; it was an old T Model Ford with three foot high wooden sides and a tarp hauled over the top. The tarp always flapped lazily in the … Continue reading →
He Go Melleeborn.
This was the first time Dad had every let me go with him on one of these trips; the sun wasn’t even up yet and we were already cantering along the road towards the mine. Just like every other time … Continue reading →
Survival Of The Fittest
Jack stood on his front verandah looking out over the bare paddocks. A heat haze shimmered off the hard, sun-baked ground, small tufts of low brown grass protruded sparsely from the dusty, grey-brown soil. In the distance the valley stretched away … Continue reading →
On The Verandah With Mum
(this is an accounting of an actual conversation) Mum looked wistfully out over the back verandah at the lone butterfly fluttering around the garden; “There aren’t nearly as many butterflies as there used to be” she announced to no-one in particular. “It … Continue reading →
a foolhardy florilegium 