Tales of a Country Childhood
It is Pamela Cole's extraordinary memory for small detail which delights us. The steamy, smoky smells of train trips, the careful dressing for shopping excursions, the marvellous tried-and-true medicines of a country kitchen, the endlessly beguiling make-up games of childhood - these are just a few of the memories she documents in words and photographs. She has produced a tantalising record of family life a half-century ago in the north-west slopes and plains district of New South Wales.
Her fondly remembered childhood will strike a chord with those who remember those days; but is also provides gems for those who wonder about past times but were not part of it. The Haberdashery Department in town, the Wireless, collecting the chips for heating the water, the sugar tongs, the cruel set and the milk jug with its beaded cover on the table - a mass of sense impressions carefully recorded will be a feast for those who are at all susceptible to nostalgia for the richness of a calmer past.
