Billabong

Enjoyed by generations of young Australians since its publication in 1910, A Little Bush Maid is the ultimate, idyllic tale of an adventurous girl growing up in the Australian bush. Billabong, a large cattle and sheep property in the Australian countryside, is home to twelve-year-old Norah Linton, her widowed father and her older brother, Jim. Norah's prim and proper aunts, who live in the city, consider she is in danger of "growing up wild" - riding all over Billabong on her beloved pony, Bobs, helping with mustering, and joining in all the holiday fun when Jim and his friends come home from boarding school. A fishing trip results in unexpected drama when they discover a mysterious stranger camped in the bush. Who is this stranger and why is he there? Norah's resourcefulness is tested to the full!

Norah is now 14. She, Jim and Wally do their best to put up with Cecil, the 19-year-old cousin from town, who has come to stay at Billabong for the Christmas holidays and tries to show off to his Bush relatives with his disdainful city airs. But, the results are invariably disastrous and highly amusing until he does the unforgiveable and takes Norah's much-loved pony for a wild ride...

Boarding school is over for the year. Norah is joyfully, reunited with her family for the Christmas holidays at Billabong, but a fire destroys the stable and homestead at Billabong. Norah risks her life to find out why...

Norah, Jim and Wally have to grow up, but that is always the order of things. Growing up brings its own attractions and its own romances. One of the best books in the Billabong series, Billabong's Daughter delves a lot more into the emotions of Jim, Norah and Wally than previous books, using Wally's experience in Queensland and his bonding with Norah as examples.

The arrival of rebellious, red-headed young Percival Blake at Billabong immediately puts the whole household on edge. How does Percival find his name changed to 'Bill'? And how does he become drawn into perilous adventure in the rocky ranges? His escapades fill a few memorable weeks of summer, in the course of which Billabong gains a new adopted son, and no-one has time to feel the least bit lonely.

Australia is in the grip of the 1930's depression and even on a billabong station, money is hard to find. Young Bob Rainham and his sister Tommy, are very badly hit, it seems that they may lose the small sheep property they have worked so hard to establish. When Bob falls into a deep cleft between some rocks in the ranges north of Billabong, it seems just another piece of bad luck, but when he examines a pebble he finds in the cleft, he decides that good fortune may be smiling on him after all. The outcome of their efforts is destined to bring long awaited happiness to Jim Linton as well as to the Rainhams.

It is the height of the gold rush when Dick and his sister Betty make their first visit to stay at Billabong and encounter rather more excitement than they'd bargained for. News of the gold strike has brought hopeful prospectors into the Billabong hills, among them an unscrupulous ex-prize fighter named McGill and Lee Wing, the Chinese gardener turned cook, whose ingenious plan to outwit McGill makes him the hero of the day. At the end of the adventure, everyone agreed with Dick - it certainly was something they'd never forget!

This is one of the darkest of the Billabong books, as Norah and Wally's gaily adventurous spirits come up against real pain... In the aftermath of sending a brutal man to prison... Wally starts to suffer from "nerves"-in other words, depression. Norah takes him and their toddler Davy on a second honeymoon, touring rural Australia. But the wife of the imprisoned man, bitterly lonely and resentful and full of thwarted love, crosses their paths, and little Davy is too much temptation for her.

In this adventure, the Billabong folk ride in wild country, droving cattle overland from the North. This is a story of good horses and dogs, their owners; and of a boy who found among them a new chance in life...