The Wayward Child is the true story of an Australian family, set in the WWII years and beyond. You will instantly warm to Rita, the wayward child, and her older sibling Joan. These two children share the common bond of a pitiful existence, played out with a rough diamond father who clearly wanted sons instead of daughters.

Their ladylike, demure mother was instrumental in the keeping of matrimonial harmony, with her sweet genteel nature, but lacked the fortitude to oppose any unfitting decisions that served to make their lives more difficult in times of tremendous hardship. With a strong-willed paternal Grandmother, whose love and loyalty to her only son knew no bounds, this story will keep the reader entranced from start to finish. The WWII era in Australia is a sadly neglected piece of history in the literary world. It is a story that needs to be told with passion, and deep respect for the love of a nation.



Genre: Non-fiction, childhood memoirs, Australian WWII historical

Heat level: 1

Cover art by Julie Hopper and Dara England




~Excerpt~

Somewhere, tucked in the earliest memories of my life, is a place called Red Hill. It is situated roughly twenty miles from the nearest township of Tumut, nestled in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. It is hardly worthy of a dot on the map as far as places of geographical importance go. Red Hill was my first home as a babe in arms. I was born on Christmas Eve of 1936 at Tumut. My sister Joan was also born there in 1931, making her my senior of nearly six years.

Red Hill was the name of a pine forest where my father was employed as a forester by the New South Wales Forestry Department. It consisted of three or maybe more houses, scattered willy-nilly with nothing in between, except a bush track, running through to a large pine forest farther along up a very steep hill. Our house was on a corner of what you might have called a main road. One way led to a place called Wee Jasper, in the direction of Canberra, and the other road, which was merely a narrow bush track, wound its way to Gundagai. We were quite isolated there, not only from other people, but from towns and places as well. Our house was a small weatherboard cottage, of modest design, with several outbuildings on a few acres of land. A sandy bottom creek edged with weeping willow trees ran through the middle of the well grassed paddocks. My father kept a milking cow, chickens, and a few sheep for meat. In short, we were mainly self-sufficient with this livestock, and a fairly large vegetable garden complemented our diet.

World War II had broken out in Europe, and a great number of men had enlisted in the armed forces, which left the workforce short of manpower all over the country. Ultimately, this led to the closure of major industries over widespread areas, bringing about short supply of many necessities required for a comfortable existence. Empty factories crippled the economy somewhat. Women were forced to take over jobs that were normally in a male orientated domain. Men, unable to join the army for whatever reasons, were left destitute and ventured farther away from their homes to eke out a living in the country areas. Some were lucky in their quest, and some were not. The unlucky ones were known as swagmen, who tramped the roads, hills, gullies, and bush. They lived under bridges or whatever shelter they came upon that might give relief from the elements. These were desperate men, and many were too old or sick for the war effort, or were simply artful dodgers of the “call up.” There was no handout of money for the unemployed back then. Anyone caught up in this awful circumstance was reduced to beggar status, forced to live off the generosity that was offered by people who were more fortunate in the bush.

At the age of three, I can remember my mother nervously doling out small newspaper parcels tied with string, which she called “hard rations.” These packages consisted of one cup quantities of things like tea, sugar, powdered milk, rice, and maybe a left over bone off the lamb leg roast or a few slices of bread. The old blue dog would always alert us of anybody tramping the road, especially if they dared to enter the house paddock. The barking would get steadily more savage as they warily approached. Mum would load the.22 rifle with one bullet and put it on the kitchen table. We would all watch and wait as the old dog snarled around the stranger’s worn-down boots and ragged pants legs.

“Got any tucker, missus?” a voice would call. “Could do with a feed and a bit a t’bacca.”





~REVIEW~

Child’s Eye View of Wayward Times

It’s not often that you get the unsullied memories of a child growing up in the Australian countryside during the years of the Second World War published raw and unvarnished over sixty years later. This is the achievement of long term Nimbin resident, Rita Carter (Lowther).

A Wayward Child begins with Rita’s country girlhood in Tumut where her father worked as a guard at the open prison farm. It describes the traumatic effects of the Second World War years on her mind and on her family, and the harsh values that informed a generation that was emotionally and intellectually starved. Rita survived with those values. This is a testimony of how difficult it is for precocious children to try to grasp problems that adults have difficulty in grasping themselves – a situation not uncommon in the isolated communities of the Australian country.

She has a writer’s eye for detail. Some of her descriptions are almost Dickensian. A writerly touch is apparent in the last sentence of a paragraph devoted to a magnificently detailed description of her grandfather and his clothing: “I think I liked him most for the way he dressed…”

We get these flashes of ‘child’s eye views’ throughout the book, all the more poignant for being written over sixty years later. And the wealth of iconic Australiana (country meals, social settings) should be mined by any producer worth his salt, of an Australian period film.

And just when you think this is a catalogue of social country life, with schoolgirl tiffs and jealousies, Rita introduces her ‘imaginary friend’ Edna, and the narrative of the Odyssey across the Australian countryside, when her father is forced to seek work, first as a shearing supervisor, and then as a rabbit trapper.

Over all this is the background of the Second World War. It looms over Rita’s childhood, it is the trauma she sees as being to blame for hardship that hard work and endurance could not prevent. The propaganda newsreels of the time had her running out of the theatres in a panic that the Japanese were on our doorstep, a constant state of childhood anxiety that voided her of any compassion at an accidental sight of Japanese prisoners during a visit to Sydney, and perhaps affords us a sympathetic glimpse of the roots of One Nation xenophobia.

It is a remarkable achievement by a remarkable, local, all Australian mature aged resident of Nimbin. As someone approaching mature age myself, I can only admire Rita’s achievement.

~Book reviewed by Warwick Fry of the Nimbin Good Times Journal, Australia




Author Bio:

Rita Lowther is a first-time author. She lives in the Northern Rivers region of NSW Australia in the alternate-lifestyle village of Nimbin. Her small farmlet in the hills overlooks the beautiful Nimbin Rocks and valley. With whip birds sounding their melodious calls along with the cries of the black cockatoos echoing overhead, this is Nature’s own writer’s heaven.

Rita began writing short stories many years ago, then decided to become a serious author by writing her childhood memoir.

It was a joy for Rita to write this true story, mainly because she wanted to thank all those brave soldiers who saved Australia from the Japanese invasion during World War II, while wanting the younger generation to know what it was like to “do it hard” for children who lived through that era of uncertainty.