BUSH BOOK CLUB

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 151, 29 June 1931, Page 8

BUSH BOOK CLUB

RECORD OF SERVICE

HELPING OUT BACK

SETTLERS

U (From "The Post's" Representative,)

SYDNEY, 18th Juno.

Although city Australiajis are apt to forget-the debt of. gratitude that they owe to their brothers and sisters of the outback, there are some organisations in, the city which keep ever in mind the physical and mental wants of their country friends. Of those which help to supply the mental needs of the. people of the backblocks the Bugh Book Club is worthy of special mention. During the past year, said the report of the club at its annual meeting, the club sent out 13,000 books, besides countloss illustrated papers and magazines, and there has been an increase of 405 in the number of places in receipt of books, making a total of 3229. It is stated that tho demand is greater than ever this year, and tho supply because of tho hard times, and the restrictions on printed matter, is not as great as formerly.

Some of the stories rolated in the report of the boon and joy that the books sent out by the club have been to the people outback mako narratives of deep human interest. One of these was related by the secretary (Miss Beula.h A. Bolton). Before the war, a woman living in a very isolated bush home' baeaine a member of tho olub. During the war, when her sons wero fighting abroad, she asked for eopios of English illustrated papers, explaining that those that had been sent to her had been a joy, because they had pictures of somo of the places that her boys had visited. After tho war the club was aslcod to accept as members hor sons and two Knglish daughters-iu'law, who were li-srinp farther out wpat. Now there are grandsons and granddaughters, who are also mombors of the plub. T.hua three generations of Australians acknowledge a debt of gratitude to. tho Bush Book Olub.

The annual report contains aome inter, esting letters from members, Ono from a woman says that drought and financial worries were forgotten for a few hours at least while each member found just what ho or sho liked in a parco.l of books sent to a group. Another woman writes: "I really cannot1 dosoribo the joy your parcel has brought into our lonely lives —there aro only a fow housos here, no amusements whatever."

It' is by such people that the boon of good things to read is most tru.ly appreciated. City folk, with their lending libraries ever at hand and othor amusements to distract tlioir attention and fill their idle hours, find it hard to realise just what a book means to people to whom reading is {Tactically the only sourco of amusement. The Bush Book Club is certainly doing a great work, not only in bringing amusement and in-. terest to many adults, but also in instilling" in young Australians a love of good literature at- a time when their minds and the, circumstances of thoir lives make them most receptive for it.