Rosemary Wearing

This is a book which transported me out of pandemic life into a life of an incredibly brave, resilient, resourceful and delightful woman who wrote her letters home to her sister during the second half of the nineteenth century in colonial Australia ( Queensland and NSW ). For those who love Jane Austen as a writer and thinker, you will be constantly delighted with Rachel Henning's irony, her comic yet gentle wit, sensibility, loving concern for her siblings and sharp observational powers of the landscape she lives and works in. The letters also give the reader insights into the impact of climate on our harsh and often unforgiving landscape, at the same time a deeper understanding I am sure of the reality of the lives of those who continue to live in our outback, on huge stations and have similar combats with their environment and isolation. Her descriptions are always vivid and powerful and throughout, positive and hopeful.