Colebrook's childhood was spent in the rain-forested highlands of northern Australia in the 1920s. In exceptionally fine and lyrical prose she recounts the ebb and flow of daily events within her family and its milieu. Visitors to the farm, holiday trips to the coast and the Great Barrier Reef, and hair-raising tales of the outback and the islands are all interwoven in a colorful evocation of life in the Australian outback. Her memoir captures perfectly the dichotomies of Australian life: the contrast and conflict between the ruggedness and rawness of the land and its pioneering people, and the affectations and values of the mother countryEngland.