Jackson's Track : Memoir of a Dreamtime Place

By Daryl Tonkin and Carolyn Landon

Book Overview

Memoir. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140276602
• ISBN13: 9780140276602
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Penguin
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

A vanished way of life

Having been raised at the gateway to the region of Gippsland that Tonkin describes in this account, I can relate to much of the geography and botany that he so evocatively describes. Regrettably, much the same fate awaited my childhood playground and it is painfully disorientating to return to what now are suburbs and planted gardens. This is a superb memoir, and, from my reading experience, a unique one within the southern state of Victoria. There is, indeed, very little in the way of eloquent love stories between anglo saxons and First Australians. The parallels, historically, roughly parallel interacial marriages in the United States. In Australia they were actually illegal for quite some time. Tonkin endures the wrath of his family and his society. But he is already a committed bushman, pretty much an extinct species today. We had an old guy living a kilometer from our fenceline abutting the forest,in much the same way as Tonkin describes. I was fascinated by his contentment, and used to sneak through the underscrub to watch him sucking his pipe and sharpening his axe. He made a few bob by cutting kindling and sharpening saws for neighbours. I loved this book and warmly recommend it.