WELCOME TO AUSTRALIAN USED HOMESCHOOL BOOKS!
AUSTRALIANA FICTION - EARLY SETTLEMENT & PIONEER LIFE
Picture Books
The Teams (Henry Lawson, illustrated by John Anthony King) $6 HB VGC A gorgeous picture book showing the life of a bullocky – coping with dust, getting bogged in mud, the heat and the loneliness. Also shows pioneer home life when the bullocky returns to his home for some precious rest with his family. Henry Lawson became a literary legend in his own lifetime and was loved by the Australian public. Lawson wrote short stories and poems with sympathy and humour. He depicted Australian men and women and Australian rural life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wonderful illustrations by the illustrator of ‘An Uncommonly Fine Day.’ Recommended! 5-9 YO
Young Murphy: A Boy’s Adventure (Gary Crew & Mark Wilson) $6 HB VGC (Ex lib) (Retails $27.95) This is the true story of John Murphy, written by Gary Crew. Young Murphy was a fifteen year old Irish boy who accompanied the explored Ludwig Leichhardt on his infamous journey of discovery from Queensland to the Northern Territory. Unlike some, young Murphy was lucky to survive. It is a true story of a boys courage and adventure in Outback Australia. 7-11 YO CBCA AWARD, NOTABLE AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN'S BOOK http://www.marklwilson.com.au/Young%20Murphy%20cover.jpg
Seven Little Australians – Illustrated Edition (Ethel Turner) $4 HB GC Lovely pictures bring this endearing story alive. 8+ http://www.nannysweb.com.au/ima/book_covers_jpg/8199.jpg
Grandma’s Precious Chest (Norah Kersh) $3 PB VGC (Ex lib) (Retails $15.95) A great droving story and a delightful vignette of Australian family history for young children. Be entertained and learn more about the outback from a grandmother who spent decades living in remote areas and educated all her own children by correspondence. Brought to life by Norah’s colourful and authentic watercolour paintings – her love of the bush and the lifestyle shines through. 5-9 YO http://www.boolarongpress.com.au/content/bookstore/bookDetails.asp?bookid=90
How The Sailor Rode The Brumby (Illustrated by Max Caesar) $4 HB EC Set in the early Moreton Bay district in the 1800s, this humorous poem tells of a sailor who wants to work on a cattle run as a stockman. Gorgeous pictures giving many insights into early Australian life. 6-10 YO
Chapter Books & Novels
The Old Homestead (Steele Rudd) $5 HBDJ VGC Steele Rudd was a comic writer of genius who created the inimitable Dad and Dave, Mother and Sarah, Dan and Grandpa, and gave them an immortal place in Australia folklore. His writings were at one time as widely known and loved as those of “Banjo” Paterson, Henry Lawson and C.J. Dennis, and this new collection makes them available once more to another generation of readers. Told with robust humour and rollicking satire, Rudd's stories are as fresh and entertaining now as they were at the turn of the century. They are full of human and historical detail, and through them pulses a sense of rough and almost indestructible life. 11+ http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/0702218065/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all
The Stars Are Upside Down (Gabriel Alington) $3 PB GC Brought up in a crowded orphanage, and now a London kitchen-maid, Tavy yearns for freedom and space. So when she sees a poster advertising a £5 passage to Australia for single females of good character, she jumps at the chance. Set in 1849, Tavy endures the hardships of the journey by boat and then to the outback. 11+ http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch.detail?invid=9661892870&browse=1&qwork=6312240&qsort=&page=1 (Different cover)
The Long, Sticky Walk (Edel Wignell, illustrator Dee Huxley) $3 PB VGC (Ex lib) It is 1886, and Emily, with her Mama, little brother James and Baby Ann are caught in a terrible flood on their farm. Papa is working far from home. When they have just enough food for one more day, Mama says they will walk to town. They set off, and struggle through the sticky, black mud. First James' boots, then Emily's, are sucked into the mud. How can they go on? 6-10 YO THE CHILDREN'S BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA NOTABLE BOOK; THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S READING CHALLENGE NOTABLE BOOK. http://www.edelwignell.com.au/teachernotes/longstickywalk.htm
Walking The Boundaries (Jackie French) $2 PB VGC Martin is a city child , summoned to the country farm of his great grandfather to carry out a seemingly easy task. If he walks the boundaries of the farm's 5000 hectares, the farm will be his. It seems like a huge joke when his great grandfather tells him he doesn't even have to walk all the way round the fences. He sets out on a bright sunny day, but suddenly finds himself being swept away in a flash flood. In a time slip, Meg, the youthful spirit of his great grandmother rescues him, and Wullamudulla, the spirit of an Aboriginal boy saves them both from a bushfire. 8-12 YO http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Non-Classifiable/product_info/3560723/ (Cover different)
Kammoora (or The Brown Land Was Green) (Mavis Thorpe Clark) $4 PB BRAND NEW (May have tanning on inturns from storage) The year is 1844: John Webster and his family arrive by bullock cart to start a new job and a new life on the huge but isolated Kammoora Station. Twelve year old Henrietta, high spirited and resourceful, and her three brothers soon find themselves involved in a host of new and exciting experiences. 10+
The Shop In Woolloomooloo (Celia Syred) $4 HBDJ GC Vicky’s mother inherits a shop – a corner shop, a sell-everything shop in a house at the end of a terrace in 19th century Woolloomooloo. There are brooms and buckets and children’s hoops hanging on the door-frame, a cat called Tiddles, mice in the skirting boards – and a strange, flitting shadow of a boy. Through Vicky and her mother, the forlorn boy is drawn into the life of the shop and earns a place with it in the life of the harbour village that Woolloomooloo then was. 8-12 YO http://www.badgerbooks.com.au/browse-books/27/post-1970/8/author/ (Scroll down page)
The Banshee and the Bullocky: Tales of my Uncle Arch (Bill Scott) $3 PB VGC A collection of 21 Australian bush stories told through the recollections of Uncle Arch. Each story is highly exaggerated and deals with the everyday lives of people in the early years of Australia's rural history. The tales often revolve around animals such as cockatoos, earthworms, mosquitoes, yabbies, termites and bower birds. 10+ http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.detail?invid=10342268232&author=Scott%2C+William+Neville&browse=1&qwork=566061&qsort=&page=1
Anna Yesterday (Ellen Miller) $5 HB EC Tasmania, in 1875, had its share of ex-convicts, thieves, tramps and beggars wandering the roads, and for their children life was difficult. Many were unwanted, deserted, being left to live as they could, so they had to be tough to survive. Anna Yesterday was one such child. 9+
World’s End Was Home (Nan Chauncy) $4 HBDJ VGC An old treasure. Dallie, lonely and without parents of her own, is suddenly whisked away from her rich indifferent aunt and plunged into the most remarkable family enterprise she could ever have dreamed of. A whole family of distant relatives take Dallie with them to make a pioneer home in a remote and unexplored corner of the southern Tasmanian coast, aptly named World's End. Hardship and adventure befall them and the climax is reached when Dallie's aunt discovers her whereabouts. 10+
Tangara (Nan Chauncy) $3 PB GC Seven-year-old Lexie, the youngest of a white Tasmanian family, finds a hidden gully in the bush where she meets and befriends Merrina, an aboriginal girl of her own age. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that their friendship mirrors that of another pair of girls a century before, and that it may have the same tragic end. Years later, when Lexie has almost forgotten, Merrina returns to help her in a last act of friendship. 9-13 YO http://www.allowaybankbooks.com.au/product.php?productid=16451 (Cover different)
Boy on a Chain (Richard Parker) $2 HBDJ GC (Jacket a little tattered) Mungilla, set in wide open country, is an early Australian home for ‘not-so-bad’ boys, the ‘lost’ rather than black sheep. Some are persuaded to escape from Mungilla, though, by a newcomer, and this is the story of their futile scramble through leagues of scrambled bush and the changes that are wrought in them on the escapade. 11+
So Far From Skye (Judith O’Neill) $3 PB VGC In the 1850s, hundreds of Gaelic-speaking crofters from the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland emigrated to a new life in Australia, due to poverty and famine. The author's great-great-grandparents were amongst such crofters, and the novel is based on their experiences. Includes maps and a glossary. 11+ SHORTLISTED FOR THE 1993 GUARDIAN AWARD AND CARNEGIE MEDAL AND HIGHLY COMMENDED FOR THE 1992 AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS MEDAL FOR CHILDREN'S LITERATURE. http://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Far-Skye-Puffin-Books/dp/0140349804 (Cover different)
The Haunted School (Carol Drinkwater) $2 PB GC Set in New South Wales in 1863, Fanny Crowe, a fresh, young school teacher struggles to establish a new school in the wilds as the superstitious local residents, particularly twelve-year-old Richard Blackburn, wonder about her willingness to live in what is reputed to be a ‘haunted house.’ Great insights into early colonial life. 9+
(Last update January, 2012)
