Hear the train blow
Subtitle: Patsy Adam-Smithʼs classic autobiography of growing up in the bush
By: Patsy Adam-Smith.
Edition: Expanded ill. ed.
Publisher: Nelson
Published: 1981
Place of publication: Melbourne, Vic
Language: eng
Number of pages: 180
Subjects: Adam-Smith, Patsy -- Childhood and youth.; Depressions -- 1929 -- Australia.; Gippsland (Vic.) -- Social life and customs.; Australia -- Social life and customs.
Description: The true story of a remarkable young girl growing up in the bush during the Great Depression. Patricia Jean Smith and her sister, Miss Mickie, grew up as railway children, their parents a station-mistress and a fettler. The catalogue of towns they lived in reverberates with the once-familiar clatter of metal and steam, but it was the tiny one-pub town of Waaia, in the centre of Victoria's wheat-rich Goulburn Valley, that kept drawing them back. These were days of yabbying and rabbiting, of bush girls riding bareback on wilful ponies, and of the tin-lizzies that transformed the Mallee forever. It was a time for learning, for devouring books and for satisfying a powerful thirst for knowledge. And then it was a time for war. Hear the Train Blow tells of Patsy Adam-Smith's classic upbringing during the Great Depression. It is a celebration of the ordinary people of Australia, and of a life that no longer exists.