Barefoot Through the Bindies - Growing up in North Queensland in the early 1900's by Marion Houldsworth
The children of a hundred years ago - the Federation era: many of them walked barefoot through the bindi-eyes to school. Their homes were bark huts with ant-bed floors. They harnessed their billy goats to fetch wood and water, and on starting work at 13, gave their pay packets to mothers struggling to feed large families - mothers who cooked on open fires and made bread, or damper, that staple of bush life, in camp ovens. Evenings at home were lit by kerosene lanterns or candles. But the children revelled in the freedom of the bush and the mateship it engendered.
Mary Grimwade, Ethel McLeod, Elizabeth Hinspeter, Violet Allingham, Susan Gallagher, Julius Mathieson, John Walker, Barbara Aitchison, Harry Pope, Henry Brown, Fred King, Olive Stallon, Marjorie Green, Florence Toombs, Constance Hill, Oscar Crowther, William Newton, Edward Cummings and Edward Smedley were all young during this era - and their stories spring out from the pages.
Take for instance the story by Constance Hill - Mother Always Liked A China Teapot.