The Secrets Of Hartleyvale Farm

Catherine Crawford, a young qualified school-teacher, applies for a position as house-keeper/governess to three small children living on a dairy farm in the Natal Midlands, in the Republic of South Africa. The old farmhouse is said to be haunted and to hold hidden secrets. Their father, Neil Middleton, is unpopular in the district, unapproachable and is known to have a filthy temper. Catherine goes to help him for the children's sakes and wonders what she has let herself in for!

Matthew Langley, the son of a Yorkshire farming family and R.A.F. Spitfire pilot, had his first glimpse of Natal in 1942 when the troop-ship carrying him to the desert war in North Africa calls at the sea-port city of Durban for a few days to off-load and refuel. He and his friend Robert Hughes are befriended by a Durban family who show them the city and surrounding country-side. He becomes absolutely fascinated with the growing of sugar cane and dreams of one day owning a cane farm of his own. In spite of his severe war injuries he is determined to return to find this farm of his dreams and to work it successfully. In doing so he meets the people of Natal and Zululand who with their warm hospitality and generosity befriend him and help him make his dream a reality.

____________________ The inspiration for the BBC TV series, directed by Shane Meadows and starring Tom Burke, George MacKay and Thomas Turgoose WINNER OF THE 2018 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE ____________________ 'Powerful, visceral writing, historical fiction at its best. Benjamin Myers is one to watch' - Pat Barker 'Phenomenal' - Sebastian Barry 'Superb' - The Times ____________________ From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history. They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is 'clipping' – the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death. When an excise officer vows to bring them down and with the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, Hartley's empire begins to crumble. Forensically assembled, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance and a rarely told alternative history of the North. ____________________ 'One of my books of the year ... It's the best thing Myers has done' - Robert Macfarlane, Big Issue Books of the Year

My love affair with all things Cox's Road (1814/15) began in February 1972, when I shared a common-room with thelate Theo Barker, the highly respected Bathurst historian at the Mitchell College of Advanced Education (now CharlesSturt University, Bathurst Campus). For three years he regaled his colleagues with numerous stories about colonialBathurst, including Cox's Road. In the ensuing years I have gathered together a significant amount of informationand visited most of the sites and places identified in the Cox's Road Dreaming Guide - very much through the eyes ofa professional ecologist.The title Cox's Road Dreaming resulted from a long period of reflection on the European interaction with Darug,Gundungurra and Wiradyuri, the three main Aboriginal Nations through which Cox's Road traversed in the period1813 to 1850. Early European historians and explorers were often guilty of writing the story of the traditional ownersout of the historical script as it related to Gregory Blaxland, William Wentworth and William Lawson, George Evans,William Cox and Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the proclamation of Bathurst in May 1815, and the opening up ofthe west to European agriculture and related fledgling industries. This Dreaming story is not seeking to emulateAboriginal Dreaming and song lines, although inspiration is drawn from Aboriginal culture. In this story tellingwe seek a nuanced reappraisal of this period of Australian colonial history, the debunking of some myths withoutnecessarily robbing them of their continuing importance, and to identify the outcomes for Aboriginal people that ledto their dispossession, the precipitous decline in their numbers, and their new reality as colonial fringe dwellers intheir own Country.A recurring theme in Cox's Road Dreaming is the focus on the Natural History associated with the road - the studyof organisms and their environments, geology, vegetation communities, and biological and physical processes. Inthe 19th century Natural History also embraced the study of Aboriginal culture, often in a very paternalistic anddemeaning manner. The study of Natural History in the late 18th and 19th centuries was often little more thanthe equivalent of stamp collecting of natural items. At its best it was undertaken to improve

Describes explorations with Aboriginal guides p. 11, 15, 75; mentions the Aboriginal sound 'Tugroy' may be the same as 'Tuggerah' a reference to the Georges River p. 28; mentions Currijon, now Kurrajong, from the Aboriginal name for the fibre used for string p. 42; appears Caley's route followed an Aboriginal trail p. 59; Caley's Fern Tree Hill had the Aboriginal name Tomah p. 62, 128; mentions seeing barked trees p. 95.

A unique first-person account of a black youth coming of age in Apartheid South Africa.