Classics, like policemen, are getting younger. Pastures of the Blue Crane (1964) and By the Sandhills of Yamboorah (1965), the first two books reissued by the University of Queensland Press in their welcome ‘Children’s Classics’ series, are not those Australian children’s books (strangely supposed by many of my age cohort not to exist) that I read as a child, but the next generation, published in the mid-1960s when I was a young adult.

Thurley Fowler’s books were first published even more recently, in 1985 and 1991 respectively, but, like those of Reginald Ottley and Hesba Brinsmead, they are classics in that they breathe wonderful, idiosyncratic life into the people, times and legends that have helped to form today’s Australia.