In 1953, after doctors prescribed fresh country air for his health, Scottish-born Robert Wales uprooted his young family from the city life of Sydney and set out to establish a sheep farm in the bush.

What he lacked in experience and expertise, he made up for in enthusiasm. Or so he hoped.

When the family arrived on a lonely hill in northern New South Wales, they had no electricity, no running water, no telephone and no choice but to make that tangle of bush their home.

From Angela Wales, eldest of the five kids, comes this extraordinarily vivid and evocative account of the next ten years as they tried to tame six thousand acres and navigate the challenges of country life.

Filled with drama and hilarity, joy and back-breaking toil, Barefoot in the Bindis portrays a childhood spent in the bush, and is a sensational picture of Australia past.

Angela grew up the oldest of five children in Walcha NSW. After the family’s move to Sydney she attended the University of Sydney, graduating

in English and classics. She spent the early 70s in Europe, hitchhiking from Rome to London and working in Athens, Evvia and Crete.

Angela has worked with the Australian National Playwrights Conference and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, and as Executive Director of the Australian

Writers Guild and the Writers Guild Foundation in the US . Barefoot in the Bindis is her first book. 

Venue Details:

Port Macquarie Library, 32 Grant St

Thursday 13 February, 10.30am – 12pm

Free, RSVP at https://mnclibrary.org.au/event/stories-behind-the-storytellers-angela-wales/