Three men are there to pick up a union speaker who rode the train with her also waiting to be picked up are a well-dressed woman and her daughter, who's about Matilda's age. When the train stops for Gibber's Creek, she finds no station or town, but the faint demarcation of a road which she might not have spotted if a wagon wasn't stopped at it. Instead, she takes her few meagre possessions, learns which train to catch from her friend Tommy, a young boy with a knack for machinery and inventing, and heads off to find her father.Īll she really knows is the name of her father's farm - Moura - and the nearest town, Gibber's Creek. Their landlady, Mrs Dawkins, is willing to let her stay if she works for her board, but Matilda has no intention of becoming a maid. When her mother dies, leaving her alone in the world, Matilda is left with few choices. She continues to write to the father she's never met, who is building a home for them in the country and getting established before they move - or so her mother has always told her, and she's never doubted it. Matilda is just twelve, pretending to be fourteen so she can work in the nearby jam factory while her mother is ill and bedridden. "Jackie French has a passion for history, and an enviable ability to weave the fascinating minutiae of everyday life into a good story.1894. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this is the untold story behind Australia's early years as an emerging nation. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams.ĭrawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war, and jubilation, this is the story of one girl's journey toward independence. In front of his terrified daughter, he makes a stand against them, defiant to the last. Her father has turned swaggie, and he's wanted by the troopers. But drought grips the land, and the shearers are on strike. In 1894, 12-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm. "Once a jolly swagman camped by a BillabongĪnd he sang as he watched and waited till his Billy boiled The story behind Banjo Paterson's iconic Australian song.
0 kommentar(er)
