AustLit

'This is an authentic, entertaining, sometimes shocking, often funny, yarn from Outback Australia.

'Tom and Gidgee, best mates, toil and laugh together for decades, in the shearing sheds and stockyards of the challenging, semi-arid Western Division. Constantly tested by extremes of Nature, their huge capacity for both work and laughter helps them cope with everything that’s thrown at them.

'They support each other through personal tragedies. When Gidgee is wrongly imprisoned, Tom saves his soul and his future. When Tom, tough and funny, is driven to become a homicidal madman, through treachery from within his family, Gidgee will sacrifice himself to save his mate from going to jail.

'The humour features the coarse, often ribald yarns and jokes of the stockyards and shearing sheds, in an era when that was a man’s world, and the chauvo attitudes which were normal then, were balanced by chivalry. This is a bloke’s book, that will also be thoroughly enjoyed by broad-minded women.'  (Publication summary)

'Feel like a trip down memory lane? Need a laugh? If you've ever pinched fruit, pelted rocks on people's roofs, talked about hairs in grade seven or been expelled from school, this hilarious memoir will be your cup of tea.

'If you didn't do any of those things but wanted to, this book is also for you.

'Growing up wild and free in the golden era of the 1950s and '60s in rural Queensland, Sandy Thorne was constantly in more strife than Flash Gordon. Her bum frequently glowed as crimson as a baboon's after thoroughly deserved thrashings from her long-suffering mother.

'With a philandering father drifting in and out of her home life and a collection of very loyal animals as her constant companions, Sandy learnt how to talk her way out of many sticky situations, emerging with an ability to laugh at herself, and to make other people laugh.

'At fourteen, she decided it was time to see what else was on offer and ran away to be a jillaroo. But that's the next instalment . . .' (Publishers blurb)

'Sandy's hilarious account of her two-month stay in a Sydney public hospital - far from the "back country" where she lives - will really kickstart your funnybone!

With one leg out of action, getting ON a bedpan is one thing .... the you have to get off the bloody thing...

Almost as big a chanllenge as trying to get some sleep ("Wake up! Heres' your Panadol..")' (Publication summary)