Published just this week, this is a fat, well-produced, mostly well-written tome by a prolific author in the field, who has previously (34 books) written about convicts, rascals, furphies, war stories, drinking, rorts, racing, Gallipoli, trucking, and limericks. This new one is similarly wide-ranging, with more than a hundred short bursts on prickly pears and pennies, blacksmiths and boxers, ghosts and girls, Dad and Dave and Young and Jackson’s, the Lawsons, both Henry and Louisa, pubs and paddleboats … you get the picture.
The full title includes the tag ‘Amazing True Stories’ and the preface claims it ‘is actually a history book in disguise’. Many of the stories have been spruiked previously on 2GB and 6PR.
Mr Haynes is prolific but selective. Apart from a short piece on the early Indigenous cricketer, Johnny Mullagh (Unaarrimin) nothing about First Nations Australians leaps from the table of contents. There are thirteen stories on Australia’s alcoholic history, a dozen on railways, a handful on spooks and mysteries, nine on courageous women, and lots on corners of Australiana that many readers will hazily recall from previous similar books or perhaps high school lessons.
The preface commences with a long quote from the late Les Carlyon from a piece, ‘Why history matters’: ‘My feeling’, said Les, ‘is that most Australians don’t believe that their history is a long saga of shame’. Probably not, but I suspect that many Australians would look well beyond the prolific Mr Haynes for their take on our history.
These are ‘yarns’, as it says on the cover, and we should not claim too much for them. Meanwhile, lots of Anglo-Celtic grand-dads will be receiving the book in their Christmas stockings. Here’s Cheers!
31 October 2024
