Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Larrikins

Larrikins, bush tales and other great Australian stories

I have just finished Graham Seal's new book  Larrikins, bush tales and other great Australian stories. A comfortable 'read' after thesis tomes, full of interesting yarns, tall tales and intriguing details that come to life in a fascinating 'storyscape'. I'll admit I meandered through it with a coffee in hand, choosing chapters at will. I began with the chapter 'After the Kelly's' as it connected me to my own family story of my great grandmother who was given a lift to school by Ned himself. Blog Link to story  How many stories such as this are passed down through the generations and beg to be told. Seal has rescued some of them from obscurity. Seal's comments on Olga Ernst  in this book made a late entry into my thesis. His  labelling of Australian fairies as 'fairies in the paddock' had a resonance as I agreed that our fairies liked to live on the fringes of the towns, in the paddocks and the surrounding bush not far from human habi