The Shiralee
  • Published: 4 May 2009
  • ISBN: 9781742285528
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 264

The Shiralee

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Paperback
28 Jun 2010
EBook
4 May 2009
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His style is realistically forthright and uninhibited, his prose crisp, and, at times, tremendously vivid'
Walkabout

A shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone – and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley.  He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back.  Strangers to each other at first, father and daughter drift aimlessly through the dusty towns of Australia, sleeping rough and relying on odd jobs for food and money.  Buster's resilience and trust slowly erode Macauley's resentment, and when he's finally able to get rid of her, he realises he can't let his shiralee go.

In evocative prose that vividly conjures images of rural Australia, The Shiralee reveal and understanding of the paradoxical nature of the burdens we carry, creates a moving portrait of fatherhood, told with gruff humour and a gentle pathos.
  • Published: 4 May 2009
  • ISBN: 9781742285528
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 264
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About the author

D'Arcy Niland

D'Arcy Niland was born in Glen Innes, New South Wales, and spent much of his boyhood travelling with his Irish father. He began work as a copyboy on the Sydney Sun but soon left to travel the country, where he led an adventurous life, working in a wide variety of jobs - as an opal miner, circus hand, stevedor and woolshed rouse about.

He married the writer, Ruth Park, in 1942 and they settled in Sydney where Niland worked as a writer, television and film scriptwriter and magazine editor. He died suddenly in 1967, two days after completing his last novel; he was forty-seven. The Shiralee, with its insights into fatherhood, confirms that he understood the human heart as well as he knew the country roads of Australia.