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Showing posts with the label Ned Kelly

Larrikins, bush tales and other great Australian stories

I have just finished Graham Seal's new book  Larrikins, bush tales and other great Australian stories. A comfortable 'read' after thesis tomes, full of interesting yarns, tall tales and intriguing details that come to life in a fascinating 'storyscape'. I'll admit I meandered through it with a coffee in hand, choosing chapters at will. I began with the chapter 'After the Kelly's' as it connected me to my own family story of my great grandmother who was given a lift to school by Ned himself. Blog Link to story  How many stories such as this are passed down through the generations and beg to be told. Seal has rescued some of them from obscurity. Seal's comments on Olga Ernst  in this book made a late entry into my thesis. His  labelling of Australian fairies as 'fairies in the paddock' had a resonance as I agreed that our fairies liked to live on the fringes of the towns, in the paddocks and the surrounding bush not far from human habi

The Stranger

Working my way through timetables and calendars for the term, a phonecall from Joe led to an interesting conversation about the sea wall of demolished Pentridge goal bluestone walls that had been burial markers. Helen's uncle believed he'd seen Ned Kelly's marker on a walk but he couldn't find it again to show her.  THE STRANGER  My great grandmother, Harriet Spear, died when I was ten years old but I have fond memories of her sitting in front of our gas fire and telling 'family stories'.  She was very fond of saying ' There's bad in the best of us and good in the worst of us' , and would always start my favorite story in this way. The track was rough and uneven.  My great-grandmother in her schoolday dress, curly, unruly hair disciplined into neat, conforming plaits plodded on as her brothers walked impatiently ahead.   It took an hour to make the four mile walk from Sailor Falls to the school house.  Perhaps daydreaming, she allowed herself