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Bush Pub by M. J. ‘Chap’ Burton

Bush Pub by M. J. ‘Chap’ Burton

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Bush Pub

by M. J. ‘Chap’ Burton

Illustrated by Max Foley

Rigby, 1983, ISBN 072701806X, line drawings in text, paperback

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, minor markings to introductory pages and front endpapers, no inscriptions, uncreased spine (see photographs)

“The Bush Pub of this book is a hotel which the author calls ‘The Farmers’ Inn”, situated in a small country town in the 1930s.  His father bought the pub just as Australia was hit by the Great Depression.  It offered a better life than farming, but the family had to learn the hotel business fast.  The author, at eighteen, became the barman.  He soon learnt the tricks of the trade… and some of the tricks of the patrons.
Many of them were a strange and eccentric crew.  There was Les, who had cheated almost everyone in town; Col Dudley and the ‘hoorangs’, who spent their weekends planning new ways to buy illicit grog; Giblets, who had ‘lost his marbles’ sliding down a slippery pole; the battling McPhee brothers; John Lander who claimed to be the ‘sooplest’ man in the world; Joe Scotton the Fanatic; and many more.  Also there were drifters of the Depression; outcasts striving to keep alive but sparing precious pennies for the drink that gave them momentary forgetfulness and companionship.
‘Chap’ Burton writes of his early days in the business, when attitudes and atmosphere were very different from today.  Most of his stories are in humorous vein, but there is an underlying seriousness which reveals the feelings of people trapped in the Great Depression.”

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