Patricia’s Reviews > A Million Wild Acres > Status Update

Just as I was thinking I had no time to finish this book I found a part that enthralled me. I grew up in the Victorian Mallee, wheat and sheep, 1950s and suddenly I recognised some of his description. Sewing up wheat bags, 22 stitches with the special stitch at the corner to seal it up. Early combine harvesters, sheep dipping. I didn't know I remembered these things! I found myself nodding.

There is interesting stuff about postal runs and squatters and selectors and various changing boundaries, bridges, railway excisions, registered brands, hotel licensees etc. A few years ago I was keying information for an index for Nineteenth Century NSW Govt land documents and all this is familiar and if I was keying it now I would find it even more interesting.

This is both a delight and hard going. I am not going to have enough time to finish it in the leisurely way I would like to,read it in the time the extended library loan allows. I don't want to rush it but I don't want to force myself to read it faster than I am comfortable with.

This is both a delight and hard going. I am not going to have enough time to finish it in the leisurely way I would like to,read it in the time the extended library loan allows. I don't want to rush it but I don't want to force myself to read it faster than I am comfortable with.

This is beginning to lose me. I was fascinated by the early chapters and the settlement in the 1820s in the land over the Blue Mountains. The details of who took up land in the Liverpool Plains and what stock they had and what happened to the stock and the people is becoming too detailed. The sudden loss of stock and the boiling down of hundreds of thousands of animals for tallow is horrifying.