In my mind I walk over the land. I run my hands through the grass as if it were the hair on my head. I dig my fingers into the dirt as if the soil were the crust of my skin. In Graft, Maggie MacKellar describes a year on a Merino wool farm on the east coast of Tasmania, and all of life - and death - that surrounds her through the cycle of lambing seasons. She gives us the land she knows and loves, the lambs she cares for, the ewes she tries to save, the birds around her, and the dogs and horses she adores. This book is a stunning thanksgiving for a place and a moment in motherhood; and a timely reminder of the inescapable elemental laws of nature. Susan Duncan on When It Rains- 'An unforgettable story of love and courage that inspires even as it breaks your heart.
After Maggie Mackellar's acclaimed When It Rains, her second memoir traces with her characteristic candour and perception her move to Tasmania, for love, and the struggles and joys of settling there. In 2011 Maggie Mackellar moved from her family’s farm in Central West New South Wales to the east coast of Tasmania with her children and assorted menagerie to live with a farmer. Her story takes as its epigraph a quote from Roger McDonald: 'Through every small opening in life, through the tiniest most restricted nerve ends, through rips and tears and tatters, life pours.' In the book she explores learning to love again after living through grief, and the complexities of doing this in a community with which she is unfamiliar, with two young children. She reflects on love after grief, juggling being a mother and negotiating a burgeoning relationship, the rhythms of country life, displacement and the writing life. This is a book for anyone who has imagined taking a risk, for anyone who has moved to a new place and struggled with feelings of homesickness and displacement. It is a story about making a life in a remarkable setting – the east coast of Tasmania, on a sheep farm in a stone house built by convicts in 1828.
After Maggie Mackellar's acclaimed When It Rains, her second memoir traces with her characteristic candour and perception her move to Tasmania, for love, and the struggles and joys of settling there. In 2011 Maggie Mackellar moved from her family's farm in Central West New South Wales to the east coast of Tasmania with her children and assorted menagerie to live with a farmer. Her story takes as its epigraph a quote from Roger McDonald: 'Through every small opening in life, through the tiniest most restricted nerve ends, through rips and tears and tatters, life pours.' In the book she explores learning to love again after living through grief, and the complexities of doing this in a community with which she is unfamiliar, with two young children. She reflects on love after grief, juggling being a mother and negotiating a burgeoning relationship, the rhythms of country life, displacement and the writing life. This is a book for anyone who has imagined taking a risk, for anyone who has moved to a new place and struggled with feelings of homesickness and displacement. It is a story about making a life in a remarkable setting - the east coast of Tasmania, on a sheep farm in a stone house built by convicts in 1828.
The heart-wrenching but triumphant story of rebuilding a life and a family. 'My body, suddenly, carries two stories of loss ... One is easy for people to recognise. My mother died of cancer. I watched her age twenty-five years in eight weeks ... My other story marks me as different. It is more silent and more savage, it is not pure and no one knows how to approach it. Somewhere I lost my husband.' When Maggie Mackellar's vibrant young husband, father to a five-year-old daughter and an unborn son, dies tragically, Maggie is left widowed and due to give birth three months later to their second child. Then her beloved mother, backbone of the family, mother to three children, grandmother to two, dies suddenly of aggressive cancer. In two short years, Maggie's life has shattered. After a year, she gives up trying to juggle single motherhood and the demands of an academic career and returns with her children to the family farm in central western New South Wales to take stock and catch a breath. The farm becomes a redemptive, healing place for Maggie and her children as they battle the heat and drought that only the Australian landscape can offer. She throws herself into the horses, sheep, ducks and chickens and slowly, finally, realises she has found a new shape for herself. Written by a brilliant new talent, When It Rains is a meditation on grief and the vagaries of the human condition, and a stunning memoir about piecing back together a life, and moving forward, one step at a time. ‘An unforgettable story of love and courage that inspires even as it breaks your heart’ -- Susan Duncan
When Niel Black, one of the most influential settlers of the Western District of Victoria, stepped onto the sand at Port Phillip Bay in 1839 and declared Melbourne to be 'almost altogether a Scotch settlement', he was paying the newly created outpost of the British Empire his highest compliment. His journal, reproduced here in its entirety, provides rare insight into the realities of early settlement in Victoria, detailing experiences of personal hardship and physical danger as well as the potential for accumulating great wealth and success. Drawing on the extensive collections of the State Library of Victoria, Strangers in a Foreign Land also includes glimpses into the lives of other settlers and the indigenous people of the area. It evokes the sense of place and dislocation that the early settlers encountered, and the hopes and anxieties they carried with them as they created new homes in Australia.
Ms. Maggie Tells Her Story By: Maggie R. Bass In this inspirational memoir, Maggie R. Bass shares the story of how she started and grew her ministry. In particular, the book details her relationships with various people – both those whom she was able to help and those who served as inspiration and mentors to her.
The arc of Maggie's remarkable life has intersected all the major historical events of the Twentieth Century. From a spare but happy childhood in rural Ohio, loved by parents who with firm, good-natured guidance taught her the morality that formed the bedrock of her personality, she saw the ravages of the Depression, then engaged in the war effort and experienced tragic loss during World War II. She joined the struggle for Civil Rights, and worked to ensure the rise of labor unions and secure women's rights. All her life she has engaged the world with feisty intelligence, sharp-witted humor and tenacious courage.
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