A Backblocks Farm

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 3

A Backblocks Farm

Ernie and the Rest of Us. By Jean Boswell. Whitcombe and Tombs. 167 pp. This book by Mrs Boswell, like her previous “Dim Horizons,” published jn 1955, tells of childhood recollections of the early days of the Northern Wairoa district. The Kauri settlement where her family worked a small farm is a little north of Dargaville which was the nearest main centre for them. Life 50 years ago for a backblocks family was poor, hardworking and full of innumerable discomforts, but at the same time, for the younger members of the family at least, full of escapades of their own making. Ernie, the eldest and the most admired, is given the limelight in this book and his ingenious schemes were clearly the cause of mingled exasperation and pride among his followers. At the same time, Mrs Boswell’s bitterness on behalf of her talented brother about the cramping effects of poverty, no less than the pressure of a farming environment, comes through. Boys and girls left school to help their parents and no-one was allowed to be different. Memoirs of pioneering days on backblocks farms hacked from the bush " need to be written. They are valuable records of a life which is not so far in the past that it is forgotten, but it is one which, with increased prosperity, is quickly passing and which needs its own records. This one is lively and • full of good humour.