Today, I renewed my acquaintance with that dog that s... on the tuckerbox. Good old Gundagai. Have been through there many times. Always brings a lump to my throat. Also visited a garden dedicated to Banjo Paterson this morning in Yass. It was good to read the extracts from his great poems, set in bronze around the park - The Man from Snowy River, of course, and the Man From Iron Bark and Mulga Bill's Bicycle and many others. God, The Banjo captured the spirit and even lifted it higher. What a talent.

-- Edited by waltzing matilda at 19:16, 2008-11-25

yep we went through gundagai the year they shifted the dog, he now sits in the town so he's got some company, a lot better than 5 mile out of town I guess, god mulga bills bycycle HAH!!, the man from snowy river certainly captured the feel of the snowys

Hi Veronica ....

I also am a great fan of the Banjo .... & know what you mean about the magic of Gundagai.  I've only been there twice but loved the feeling of the old bridge & reflect at the sad tradgedy of the flood that destroyed the old town with great loss of life.  I recall a small museum there that contained a model of ?   (I can't remember the details but I'm sure someone will remind me.)

Back to AB ... I have Two volumes 'Singer of The Bush" & "Song of the Pen" that contain his complete works from1885 to 1941.  I like the prose works in particular.

I'm also a fan of his contemporary Henry Lawson &  have similar volumes of his complete works.  In his case, given my liking of prose, I am fortunate in that I have two publications containing just his prose .. 87 stories in "While the Billy Boils" & another 56 in "Joe Wilson's Mates".

A favourite of my young grandchildren is a book & accompaning tape of Mulga Bill's Bicycle that we have enjoyed in-numerable times.
I like the bit that set the scene ..

".... The grinning shop assistant said, 'Excuse me, can you ride?'
'See here young man,' said Mulga Bill, 'from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none that can ride like me.
I'm good all round at everything, as everybody knows ......"

For those of you who bush camp off the beaten track I'm sure that there could be no better companion than the four volumes that I refered to earlier.

It must have been great to enjoy their verbal sparing in the newspapers of the day.

regards & please continue to keep us posted of your travels  .. I for one enjoy the memories that your commentry arouse.

-- Edited by Cupie at 20:14, 2008-11-25

Thanks for your post Cupie. I've been driving down the track over the last few days listening to an audio book : "Cloudstreet" by Tim Winton. It's knocking my socks off. I can almost hear the voice of CJ Dennis plus a whole lot more. I don't think it's everyone's cup o' tea but i thought I'd let you know about it just in case. In the words of the classics, it's a bonzer booki! But not for everyone. Check it out.

G'day again V

Just Googled "Tim Winton Cloud Street" & got this ...

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Dustjacket synopsis:
"Cloudstreet a broken down house of former glories on the wrong side of the tracks, a place teeming with memories of its own, a place of shudders, shadows and spirits.

"From separate catastrophes, two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing this great breathing, sighing, muttering structure and begin their lives again from scratch.

"There are the industrious Lambs, who wait and wait on the God of Miracles who seems to have foresaken them, and the gambling Pickleses, who prefer to deal with the mysteries of Lady Luck and her henchmen. Both aghast at the fates which have delivered them to Cloudstreet, and the baffling realisation that they will always remain there.

"Together they roister and rankle in a divided house that begins as a roof over their heads and becomes a home for their hearts.

"In this fresh, funny novel, full of wonder and dreams, brilliant young Australian author, Tim Winton, weaves the threads of lifetimes, of 20 years of shouting and fighting, laughing and grafting, into a story about acceptance and belonging."

Quotes:
"It is, I suspect, a masterpiece" - Veronica Brady, West Australian
"Nothing short of magnificent...a wonderful read" - Andrew Yule, Time Out


First Paragraph

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.

Twenty years, they all say, sprawling and drinking. There's ginger beer, staggerjuice and hot flasks of tea. There pasties, a ham, chickenlegs and a basket of oranges, potato salad and dried figs. There are things spilling from jars and bags.

The speech is silenced by a meodious belch which gets big applause. Someone blurts on a baby's belly and a song strikes up. Unless you knew, you'd think they were a whole group, an earthly vision. Because, look, even the missing are there, the gone and taken are with them in the shade pools of the peppermints by the beautiful, the beautiful the river. And even now, one of the here is leaving.

From the Picador hardback edition, 1991.

Notes:
This novel won the Miles Franklin Award in 1992

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Looks like I'll have to add it to my list & then off to the secondhand book shop where I get all of my reading these days ..

thanks

Ooops!  forgot to add this ..

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Tim Winton

Brief Biography

Tim Winton was born in 1960 in Western Australia where he still lives. He attended a Creative Writing Course at Curtin University in Perth, and it was while there that he began his first novel An Open Swimmer. This was entered for The Australian/Vogel Award in 1981. It won and Winton has never looked back, utilising his considerable talent to maintain a full-time writing career. Something of an oddity for any Australian writer but especially for one of his age.

There must be something about Winton that leaves book reviewers more than a little non-plussed. In 1991, after the release of Cloudstreet in Britain, Martin Wroe of The Independent described him as "sitting in a hotel foyer, he cuts an unusual figure, three feet of brown hair trailing down his wide back, T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots." And Anne Chisholm of The Daily Telegraph found him "shortish and roundish, with a freckled oval face, shrewd, friendly brown eyes and waist-length curly dark hair in a long pigtail." Maybe it's the hair which throws them. In any event it doesn't make an appearance in any publicity shots, with the preference here being for either a dreamy faraway look, or eyes-closed, half-asleep expressions combined with a languid body posture. Very odd.
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He seems like an interesting guy .... The website includes a list of his other publications.

Yeah. He'd have to be one of Australia's top writers of the moment. I didn't know when Cloudstreet was published but from what you've turned up it was 1991. A long time ago. He's won a lot of awards since then with other books.

As I mentioned I'm listening to it as an audio book iwhile I'm driving, I have to give full credit to the reader - Peter Hosking _ he really makes it live and his fair dinkum accents make me think of my grandfather till the tears come.

I hope you can pick up some of his works and have a read. I reckon he's great and I'm not even a reader of fiction. I prefer non fiction most of the time. Let me know what you come up with. Cheers.

-- Edited by waltzing matilda at 20:45, 2008-11-27

-- Edited by waltzing matilda at 20:50, 2008-11-27