Description
SECOND HAND BOOK
“Marvellous Melbourne!”
Thus nineteenth-century travellers exclaimed or exulted when, after weeks at sea varied only by tropical odours or langours, they suddenly came face to face with a full-blown Victorian metropolis, the equal of Birmingham or Manchester (even of London some Melbournians thought) 12,000 miles away from England, home and beauty.
In the twenties of the present century Melbourne was equally marvellous, especially if, like Graham McInnes, you were there as a boy: directing traffic during the Great Police Strike; attempting to derail electric trains; fighting bush fires; scrambling over extinct volcanoes; exploring abandoned tunnels; breaking into weekend shacks; sailing down Port Phillip Bay; reading serialized pioneer science fiction in the local press; weltering in calf love for a lisle-legged schoolgirl goddess; listening to Jack Smith, The Whispering Baritone, on a hand-cranked portable gramophone; or pestering the life out of step-cousins reckoned up by dozens, to say nothing of step-aunts and step-uncles.
Those who remember Graham McInnes’ earlier volumes – The Road to Gundagai, Humping my Bluey, Finding a Father – will welcome this chance to explore with an energetic and spirited youngers, and in a tingling and pungent style, a Melbourne still marvellous today. We firmly believe that after reading Goodbye Melbourne Town even Sydneysiders will admit this. No higher praise is possible.
Hardcover, 211pp, 1968
Condition: Fair, slight wearing on dust cover
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