Hesba Brinsmead (1922–2003)

But with sunrise the wind dropped, the rain cleared from sea and mountains. From her window she looked over te dripping garden, heavy with the scent of wild lemon flowers, and beyond, the bright-washed pastures. There once more, standing contemplative and sober among the rain-lit grass, was the blue crane.

Sixteen-year-old Ryl has spent her whole childhood at boarding-school and hasn't seen her father since she was three, and she and her grandfather Dusty didn't know the other existed until they met at the reading of Ryl's father's will. He left them his money and a farm in the town where Dusty was born, and although Ryl wants to sell it as soon as possible, they decide to visit the farm together and stay for a few months. Dusty loves it immediately while its charms take longer for Ryl to be won round by its charms. The story is about Dusty and Ryl's developing relationship, their friendships with the locals, their work on the house and farm, and especially a mystery about Ryl's parentage which Dusty is strangely unwilling to discuss.

This award-winning Australian Young Adult book was published the year I was born and I think I must have borrowed it from the library as a teenager. Although I had forgotten the tile and author, thirty or more years later I remembered enough of the story to get it identified by an on-line book ID site. As a teenager, I liked it a lot, and the story still holds up, although some of the character development seems a bit stilted. I do like Ryl and Dusty, Perry, Rose and Clem and the rest of their friends and neighbours a lot. Even Glen isn't too bad at the end, although I'm glad that Ryl decided to go on a date with Spike too, as I'm not sure she and Glen would be well suited in the long run. Another thing I like is that there is a strong sense of place and history, with the sugar cane fields and banana plantations of northern New South Wales, and the presence of the descendants of the 'blackbirds', South Sea islanders who were brought to Australia to work in the sugar cane fields. Prices in the book are in pounds, which surprised me, so I looked it up and discovered that the Australian pound was replaced by the Australian dollar when the currency was decimalised in 1966.… (mer)