How to get a taxi driver’s licence the easy way! This story is 100% true, dating from a time I lived in Sydney in the late 1960s. Names are not changed to protect the innocent – there were no innocent.
David was in trouble. A broken window was discovered, and Police Chief Daddy strongly suspected he was the culprit. Lawyer Mummy was not so sure. But David knew he had to quickly find out the cause, or he could be in real trouble.
Every Christmas, Father McEvoy – the humble priest of an inner-city church – assembles a small crib or tableau for his people. It features the usual characters – Mary, Joseph, the Christ-child, animals and shepherds. But this year it comes to life in an unexpected fashion.
Albert Namatjira (1902–1959) was an Aboriginal painter from Central Australia. Widely considered one of the most notable Australian artists, he pioneered contemporary indigenous art. He was the first Aboriginal artist to become widely popular, and the first of his people to be given Australian citizenship rights, a mixed blessing. (See Wikipedia.) Time gets bent a little in this retelling.
This tale is based on a personal trip in 1969, when I hitch-hiked from Sydney to Perth, some 3,000 miles. This, in the middle of a very hot Australian summer. The main road, a lot of it unsealed at that time, runs across the Nullarbor Plain, a desolate land inhabited mainly by kangaroos, with a few small settlements along the way. I must have been mad, but I did actually complete the journey, taking only 3-and-a-half days. The latter portion of the story is fiction, but the majority is true.
Poggitty Farm is a most unusual place. The animals run the entire farm themselves, and life runs very smoothly. That is, until one day a stranger showed up with a promise to make the animals famous.
Life is normally harmonious at Poggitty Farm, where the animals run the place themselves. (I sugggest you read “The Poggitty Farm Choir” first, if you haven’t already done so.) This time, a hard winter brings a strange visitor, and an even stranger consequence.