Why read Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories?

Book cover of Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories

Book description

Yarns, legends, myths, jokes and anecdotes are our national lifeblood. These home-grown and borrowed tales, told and re-told over generations, offer an insight into the larger national story of which every Australian has a part.Was Breaker Morant the Gatton murderer? What happened to Sniffling Jimmy and Black Mary? We revisit…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Patsy Trench

Author

This is a cornucopia of the weird and wonderful in Australia: the origins of ‘mateship’, rural remedies, measuring the weather by the behaviour of birds, how ‘Waltzing Matilda’ had its origins in a shearers’ strike, and the bizarre life of the itinerant swagman, including hints on how to make a ‘swag’ and carry it according to the legendary writer Henry Lawson. There are wonderful tales of Australian ‘taciturnity’ and folks living so remotely they still thought Queen Victoria was on the throne in the mid-1900s. It may be light-hearted in tone but this book somehow gets to the heart of…

From Patsy's list on The best books about the beginnings of colonial Australia.