The story of a family being uprooted from a comfortable Sydney lifestyle and transplanted to a farm 20 kilometres from Walcha is the basis of a book to feature at the Port Macquarie Library in February.
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Author Angela Wales will be at the library on February 13, from 10.30am until noon.
Barefoot In The Bindis is dedicated to her mother who passed away just weeks before Christmas 2019.
"We went from such a comfortable lifestyle in Sydney and got plonked 20 kilometres from Walcha, with no electricity, no phone and an outside toilet," she said.
"My mother learnt really quickly how to grow her own vegetables, make all our clothes and how to bottle her own fruit.
"Those 10 years in Walcha are indelibly etched in my mind but it wasn't until I started working in America and told people about that experience that the idea of a book started to form.
"So this book was in the back of my mind for about 20 years and was eventually written when I retired and returned to Australia to care for mum in her later years."
Angela says the family experienced quite a lot of disasters during their decade in the bush.
Despite the harshness of the environment, the author says she would "get boxes of books from the Walcha library to read".
"I'd say that's where my desire to work with writers was formed. I became interested in theatre and playwrights," she added.
Barefoot In The Bindis was eventually launched in Walcha in March 2019 with the irony that the small community does not have a bookshop.
The reader feedback, particularly from those who had similar experiences growing up, has been gratifying, she said.
"It has been really nice connecting with people with similar childhoods (during the promotion of the book) and connecting with people from around Australia that I may well not have met."
Angela Wales will be part of Stories behind the storytellers, at Port Macquarie Library on Thursday February 13, from 10.30am until noon.
To RSVP to go the library website.