Colin Thiele is one of Australia’s most respected and loved children’s authors.  His vivid re-creations of rural life and childhood have earned a special place in our literature and culture.  Sun on the Stubble, Storm Boy and Blue fin all deserve their classic status both as reminders of the worlds from which we grew and for the current issues they raise.

This updated edition of Thiele’s reminiscences takes the reader right back to his beginning.  He opens with his birth in 1920 and how the Thiele family settled on their farm in South Australia.  The young Colin grows, the family struggles through the Depression, good years are mixed with bad, and slowly the real world of his books opens up for the reader.  Harvest time, children playing in the dust, new-fangled machines, birds and animals, home chores – each detail builds a bit more of the picture of happy, hard, human world of his childhood.

The text is interspersed with pictures taken from old advertisements and catalogues, allowing readers to appreciate references to those products and equipment.  Older readers would find a flood of reminiscences stirred by some of them!

But this is not a rosy hued gush of fond memories.  Thiele is realistic about the difficulties and problems of life.  There are droughts and influenza epidemics that claim lives, and there are the disasters and small personal embarrassments that make up anyone and everyone’s lives.  He realises how difficult his parent’s decision to let him continue at school makes life for them and his siblings.

The tale of With Dew on my Boots ends with university and World War 2, but this edition has several chapters added – short episodes of encounters with people all over Australia.  Some are from his early years as a teacher, others from his tours as an author, or just as a traveller.  They add a few more fascinating footprints to the trail begun in the first part, the trail through the dew of the paddock, looking back and looking forward.

Review by David Beagley

© 2002 David Beagley