Excerpt from 'Tui's in the Dogwood Tree'

"This photo, which I haven't seen for probably 70 years, took me straight back to our house in Weld St, and me a skinny eight year old in a hand-me-down dress and bare feet. The dress I recall, was in a faded blue check with a broad once-white collar... I can smell the apples stewing in the lean-to kitchen and hear the clatter of pots over the low drone of the radio playing a swing tune. Mother hums along, a little dance in her step, while I sit on the swing and swot at flies on a lazy summer afternoon. My two brothers have been sent to the Heaps farm on the corner for a billy of milk. They ride 2-up on Dolly, our fat black pony, leaving Nigger to neigh over the back fence for his mate. I pinch an apple from the wooden box on the freshly painted porch steps and tread carefully over the carpet of clover and bees, passed the sagging loop of clothesline pegging out the families unmentionables, to the corner under the gum trees where the big brown horse is waiting in the shade. Biting off pieces of the sweet juicy apple, I feed them to Nigger, and leaning towards his warm neck I breath him in... If I close my eyes I can smell him now, and feel his breath on my hand."

Excerpt from 'The Lemon Tree - Ron Peters Remembers'

"I worked two years as a bushman on my own, and then I took on a partner. It was a good way of life, I loved every minute of it. Initially we hired bulldozers and then I decided to buy my own. I bought a big caterpillar D7, a beautiful thing. I had to drive it to the sheep station where my father was still living. So I pulled up there and had a cup of tea, passed the time of day, and he came and looked at this caterpillar and he said ' Whose is it?' And I said 'It's mine.' And he said 'By god son you're going to land yourself deep in the shit one day'. I finished my cup of tea, got on my D7 and off I went."

Exerpt from 'Valerie - The Memoirs of Valerie May'

"The house itself was very nice. It was big and had concrete floors painted red, which the house boys used to polish with coconut shells cut in half. Upstairs were the bedrooms. We had a cook, a house boy and a gardener. The cooks were able to go to the markets and buy what they called mutton, but it was actually goat, and other essentials. We couldn't buy fresh vegetables there, but once a month the train came up from Lagos and we got a cool store order on that. I'd been trying to teach the house boy to wash everything in hot soapy water, and with one order of vegetables, he decided he'd wash them all with hot soapy water! I couldn't really complain, as he'd clearly taken my lessons to heart."