Stillways: A Memoir

A raw, rough, poetic, funny, intensely moving and quite, quite beautiful memoir about a boy from the bush, growing up in Australian in the sixties.

From one of Australia's favourite actors comes a classic memoir of an Australian childhood in the sixties.

Young Steve was a larrikin, happy-go-lucky, resilient kid, coming of age in a simpler time. Growing up on a farm cut from virgin scrub at the end of a lake, a farm called Stillways, Steve daydreamed about cars and escape. His story is about him heroworshipping his older brother with Brylcreem in his hair; going to school as a young kid with bus money knotted into a hanky and clutching his Globite schoolcase; fighting bullies at school and dreaming about girls; being amazed at the first television in town; remembering where he was when Marilyn Monroe died...

But there's a darker thread running through the story: the father who'd take out his frustrations by savagely belting his young children; a struggling mother who'd do anything to protect her kids; a young boy irrevocably marked by his father's anger.

Endearing, funny, honest and unflinching - this memoir will become an Australian classic.