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Everyone in Mike's street was born on their kitchen tables. The time was the Great Depression.

 

The place was an Australian working-class community. Everyone was battling to survive, but to ten-year-old Mike and his mates, Siddy and Fred, the situation seemed quite normal.

The youngsters were part of a nearly derelict society. Some people, like the pretty young Oppos' teacher, clung to hopes of a better life. Others, like Miss Jam, who Siddy said was a witch, clung to the last rags of existence.

 

Grub and Moonlight picked up a living from anything that came along. Amy Angas believed in the spirits, though no one knew whether she practised black or white magic. Mike's grandfathers, and the other old men told tall tales of the past and got into strange scrapes in the present. The priest and policeman acted as umpires.

This genuinely Australian novel gives a vivid picture of life among the dispossessed, and yet it is full of wry and sometimes riotous humour. The author writes from first-hand experience of the people and the era, and he "tells it like it was".

HALF DAYS AND PATCHED PANTS:  $20 including postage

 
   

HALF DAYS AND PATCHED PANTS  AUDIO BOOK: $15 including postage

The audio book of Half Days and Patched Pants read by Allen Lyne is now available on CD.

 
       
  In 1938,Mike was seventeen and the depression just about over. Things weren't as bad as they had been when he lived down the hill, but they weren't too good, either.  So Mike's Uncle Harry, being a careful sort of man, told him it was time he put childish things behind him and started to earn his keep.

 

Max Colwell paints a vivid and nostalgic picture of life as it appeared to a young man before the outbreak of the Second World War. 

We follow Mike's journey as he learns about life, about the hopes and dreams of ordinary working men and women, about pigeon and horse racing, about girls and love, and about death; about desperation, and about the responsibilities of growing up.

 

Full Days and Pressed Pants is a blend of wry humour and deep compassion, rich in the down-to-earth flavour of the Australian vernacular, and written with sincerity and conviction.

FULL DAYS AND PRESSED PANTS :   $20 INCLUDING POSTAGE

 
   

FULL DAYS AND PRESSED PANTS AUDIO BOOK: $15 INCLUDING POSTAGE

The audio book of Full Days and Pressed Pants read by Allen Lyne is now available on CD.

 
       
 

Glorious Days... follows on from Full Days and Pressed Pants.  Now we find Mike as an army conscript, a 'Chocolate Soldier' among teenagers from all walks of life, many of whom had never been away from home in their lives.

 

There is Barney from Broken Hill, an authority on all things from ingrown toenails to milking cows; Nugent, who started wheezing every time his grandmother opened the ice-chest door; the Dome,who had swallowed an encyclopedia when he was a kid and was halfway to being a genius; and the Tube who had had so many operations that he reckoned he had nothing left inside.

 

There were also sergeants like Burke, who Barney reckoned was as useless as a kookaburra with a sore throat when it came to reading a map.

In this book, Max Colwell describes how army training brought the worst and best out of boys as they were turned into men, a process that gave birth to a particular brand of wry humour.

You will laugh and be brought close to tears as you join Mike and his friends through their Glorious Days in Khaki Pants.

GLORIOUS DAYS AND KHAKI PANTS :   $20 INCLUDING POSTAGE

 
     
       
  THE TRILOGY IS AVAILABLE AS A SET FOR $45 INCLUDING POSTAGE ANYWHERE IN AUSTRALIA

 

 

 
 

 

AUSTRALIAN PLAYS FOR STUDENTS.

 

 

     

 
 

 

Everyone in Mike's street was born on their kitchen table.  The era is the great Australian Depression.

The place, an Australian working class suburb.  Half Days and Patched Pants follows the story of three boys growing up in tough times.  The play brings out the humour and despair of people who were materially poor, but rich in other more important ways.  These were the days before radio and television, when conversation had an honoured place, and the only recognisable enemy was any person with authority.

 

HALF DAYS AND PATCHED PANTS

$10 including postage

 

 

 

 

In "No Through Road" Max Colwell leaves the dispossessed of the Great Australian Depression and turns his attention to the problems of today's young and the aged in a period of high unemployment in Australia.

His setting is Trump Park, which attracts a variety of inhabitants for a variety of reasons. 

 

Old Fred comes to Trump Park for peace and quietness;  his friend Chummy to find companionship and an ear on which to vent his peculiar brand of humour; Eva, the collector of cans, to escape over-zealous Council employees; and Neville, who speaks only once in five or six years, to sleep rough; Anne, a high school student with a flair for art, and Peter, a young man on the dole with what he sees as a hopeless ambition to become a journalist, are also attracted to the park. They see the old people as material for a human interest article for a local paper, but because of the generation gap, have difficulty in finding a peg on which to hang their story.

 

Meanwhile, the Misses Trump, Florence and Matilda, separated from all by a privileged background, watch from the sidelines until spurred into action by an invasion of louts and a Council decision to close the park.

In the face of a common threat, some friendships are strengthened, but the gap between young and old and rich and underprivileged remains. Only the irrepressible Chummy crosses the park to lay the foundations of a new relationship.

NO THROUGH ROAD:  $10 INC POSTAGE

     
         
   

The Carroll Inheritance

 

Rachel Dowd, a young servant girl from London in the 1850s takes a position in a comfortable North Adelaide mansion. With the discovery of gold in Victoria, her placid and well-ordered life changed dramatically. The promise of instant wealth on the goldfields transformed aimless men into zealots, wise men into fools, and steady tradesmen into reckless adventurers.

Through Rachel’s eyes we see vividly the South Australia of 150 years ago. 

 

 

 

THE CARROLL INHERITANCE:  $15 INCLUDING POSTAGE

 

 
         
 

The story of the rites of passage of two boys.  Ranji is immersed in grinding poverty, Morgan in Australian privilege.  Ranji's path is an upward one as he climbs with cunning and fortitude from degradation to wealth. Morgan rejects his background and sinks into squalor as a backpacker in Asia.

Both face temptations of the flesh and the soul in various forms, and both struggle to understand life and its meaning  as they experience and witness extreme suffering of saints and sinners, of rich and poor, caused by natural and manmade disasters.

When their paths cross as young men, it leads to violence, but from that violence springs spiritual understanding for both of them.

 

This book is a metaphor for love, peace and harmony between all people, races, creeds and religions.

WEEP FOR THE RICH MAN WEEP FOR THE SAINT:  

$30  INCLUDING POSTAGE

 

 

 
         
 

Great Aunt Agnes was an “old maid” who lived in a tent and believed that children were made to be seen and not heard, and above all, not to be involved in conversation.

But this did not prevent her from forming a close friendship with a young boy, who although puzzled by her silence, was content to become her official fly and blowfly exterminator.

The young boy, however, was inquisitive, and eventually could not resist the temptation to delve into her past.

He discovered three old photographs taken in India, which connected her to the Fishing Fleet, unattached young ladies who, in the 1870s, converged on Simla in the hope of marrying eligible Indian army officers.

The young boy also discovered that there was much more to Great Aunt Agnes’s daydreaming than merely the lethargy of old age.

GREAT AUNT AGNES UNDER CANVAS and SMELL OF DEAD HORSES

$10 INCLUDING POSTAGE.

 

 

 

 
         
 

Published in 1984 Australia’s Timeless Land is a remaindered limp covered tourist book covering Alice Springs, Ayers Rock and The Olgas with stunning colour and black and white photographs. The text is historically informative and interesting. Although the photos were taken in the early 1980s they still capture the timeless beauty of this ancient land. There are a limited number of copies available for sale at $7 each including postage.

These are new copies from the original 1984 print run. 

 

 

AUSTRALIA'S TIMELESS LAND

$7 INCLUDING POSTAGE

 

 
       
  For all book orders and
enquiries please contact

DAVID COLWELL
86 Ninth Avenue
Royston Park
Phone (08)
7329 6836
or
E-MAIL; mcpubl@adam.com.au

 

All payments should be made by cheque or money order i.f.o. DAVID COLWELL
Please be aware that we are unable to accept credit cards.
 
 

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