I have just come back from holidays with a new found appreciation for Australia.
Not really, I love our country, I love spending time in nature, I love where we live, I love reading Australian books, eating Australian produce…I love Australia, it’s just I have fallen back in love with it. We went to Melbourne and Tasmania and so we went to Sovereign Hill, ( I saw the Eureka flag even!) We road tripped from Hobart to Port Arthur, calling into a chocolate factory on the way.. I have always known I love Australia, but now I know it! (Plus how great are warm coats and ski gloves…)
Gosh we have beautiful country here. We saw a million (more or less) beautiful homes and that just completely called in mind the fantastic new release of Kelly Rimmer’s The Midnight Estate. Fiona is a heritage architect and when her life suddenly implodes (cheating husband and best friend..) she takes on restoring the beautiful, crumbling mansion Wurimbirra. Its set in Forbes and is just the story you picture when you see those beautiful federation homes.. I loved this story so much!
The Naturalist’s Daughter was the first Tea Cooper novel I read and I have gone on to read them all I think, but this one holds a special place, I didn’t even realise I knew so little about the platypus and with all the museums we’ve visited this holiday I have a new deep appreciation for the work and passion of people who have made it possible. This novel is set in the Hunter Valley, early 1900s, when Rose starts to study the platypus alongside her father..read it, you’ll love it!
The Grace Stories is on the school syllabus this year and we have not been able to keep it in stock at Dymocks Eastgate! I’ve spoken to lots of kids and parents who were coming back in for more stories and so I had to borrow a copy from the library, no wonder they couldn’t get enough; these are so great! Perfect early colonial stories, loved this series by Sofie Laguna
There are SO many great Australian thrillers! Jane Haper, Chris Hammer, Christian White, Matthew Spencer….the list goers on and on, we are so lucky to have so much talent locally, for this list I picked Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town, but there is a surfeit to choose from! This is the thriller-est thriller set in a small country town like the million we drove through on holidays..secrets and lies and small town community..I may have told you too much already!
I adore A Fortunate Life. I loved this memoir of AB Facey; I probably read it first over 20 years ago and it’s just one I gift and think of often. He worked SO hard and life was SO hard, but the stories are told with such warm and humour. Bert really saw his life as being fortunate and I just found myself thinking of him again when looking at the tents miners had been living in at Sovereign Hill, I hope they had the same mentality because man I was freezing… have just come back from holidays with a new found appreciation for Australia.
