Winner, 2008 IP Picks Best Creative Non-Fiction Award.
This memoir is a nostalgic insight into what it was like to grow up in Australia in the 1930s and 40s. Mixed with undertones of delightful humour and fading innocence. Audio version performed by Anne Stevenson.
Put the Billy On gives us insights into what it was like to grow up in Australia in the 1930s and 40s. The story is mixed with undertones of delightful humour and fading innocence. Historical events, such as the lead up to World War II, are artfully compared to the tensions in the speaker’s own life.
Ann Jones invites us to reflect on how far we’ve come, and the precious things that may have been lost on the way.
Put the Billy On won the IP Picks 08 Best Creative Non-Fiction Award.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
“Put the Billy On is about growing up in far northern Queensland during the war years. Ann Jones’ autobiographical tale is an important work in that it describes rural life in Australia during this turbulent period.
More specifically, and significantly, it provides an insight into the lives of women during this period.
When researching for my own writing projects, one would think that women didn’t exist at this time in Australia’s history; so few, it seems, have had their stories told. The work is a valuable record of rural women’s experience of life on the land and shows women’s roles to be broad. In addition to maintaining the home and raising families, they played a key role in maintaining a sense of social connectedness among the members of these isolated communities. They were the first aid officer and nurse for the property, the radio operator, the dressmaker, the secretary, the teacher and childcare worker, the cleaner, baker, hotelier for visiting officials as well as unpaid labourer when an extra hand was required on the property. And in the case of Ann’s mother, part-time enemy aircraft spotter!”
– Marlene Lewis
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
“It was a lot of fun reading this first-person account of Ann Jones’ experiences of her childhood in the Australian bush. It is a way of life that has all but disappeared.
The chapters of the book are her recollections of this and that… This really was a very enjoyable book! Maybe there will be another book, a sequel — perhaps by one of her children or grandchildren. I can hope …”
– Anne Salazar