Sunday, September 27, 2009

“I even trained dingoes to round up the sheep”

Ian Warden looks at some of the work-seeking ingenuity of the battling ‘train jumpers’ of the Depression years in his article in the September issue of the  National Library of Australia Magazine.
Bill Ryland was one of those who spent the Depression years being stoical and resourceful while ‘jumping the rattler’ (secreting himself aboard trains so as to go from place to place looking for work). His unpublished memoir,‘Knockabout Boy—Tales and Songs of aTrain Jumper in the 1930s’, is one of theNational Library of Australia’s unsung gems.
National Library of Australia Magzine, September 2009.