Favourite book
We were always reading when we were children.
Mum was a big reader and encouraged us to read anything we wanted except, for some reason, Enid Blyton, she didn’t approve of her.
As a child I read and re-read The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico, The Silver Sword by Paul Serraillier and the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis.
But my favourite was Pastures of the Blue Crane by H.F Brinsmead.
This won the Children’s Book of the Year in 1964 and is about a girl, who was an orphan, who left her expensive boarding school in Melbourne and had to live with a grandfather she had never known on the north coast of New South Wales.
It’s just a great story about family and acceptance and discovering a sense of place and belonging.
I didn’t pick this all up as a child, of course, it was only when I re-read the book as an adult that I worked that out.
I just liked the story when I was young.
My other favourite reading moment as a child was when I discovered the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M Montgomery.
I was friends with Leonie Jackman and Mrs Jackman had the whole set and lent them to me so I could read them. I love the Anne books and have my own set now.
Currently reading
I don’t read a lot of fiction now but I have just read The Dry by Jane Harper – it was fantastic.
It’s the author’s first novel and is set in a town in northern Victoria that has been subject to years of drought. Three people in the town were murdered and Aaron Falk returns to his home town for the funeral but then gets drawn into the case and begins an investigation.
So, it is like an old fashioned murder mystery but it was just unputdownable.
