Author(s): Marion Houldsworth

Australian Biography

Growing up in North Queensland in the early 1900's. Australian children of this new millennium takes for granted a lofestyle that includes videos, T.V. Soapies, DVDs, computer games. But the children of a hundred years ago, the Federation era, had a different set of expectations. They walked barefoot through the bindies to school. Their homes were barkhuts with ant-beds for floors. they harnessed their billy-goat carts to fetch wood and water. This earlier generation of North Queenslanders lived with floods and droughts. They knew grinding poverty and they knew hard work, but they were proud of their independence and self-reliance and their resilience.