That's a very good article - thanks for finding it Bookworm_Girl. I did laugh at the final quote, which is from a spoof of Dylan Thomas's
A Child's Christmas in Wales. It is quoted so seriously that I wondered if the person who put it in realised it was a spoof.
Good luck with the weather, bfisher! Indeed, it couldn't be much more different from ours, especially at this time of year!
I finished my reread of
Eucalyptus last night, and enjoyed it all over again. I had forgotten how funny it was in the sly references Bail makes. For example, the beginning of Chapter 3, describing the landscape:
Quote:
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... fitted out with blue sky and the obligatory tremendous gum tree, perhaps some merinos chewing on the bleached-out grass in the foreground, the kind of landscape seen during homesickness and in full colour on suburban butchers' calendars handed out with the sausages at Christmas ('Pleased to meet, meat to please' etc.)
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Again, in Chapter 5, with its description of the little country town with "only one of everything" - there are so many of them, though many of them are now near the end of their existence because the rural industries they supported are either mechanised or gone. Once these little towns lose the bank and the school, they have no future.
I won't say anything more at this stage about the story itself, a wonderful Australian version of a fairy tale, except to say I love the way the central problem is resolved.