On Our Selection

In Short

This Australian classic follows the Rudd family as they clear, plant, and struggle to retain a small agricultural plot in the Queensland bush. Told from the perspective of one of the younger sons, the narrative chronicles twenty years of relentless toil, drought, crop failures, and financial hardship, balanced by bush dances, local rivalries, and domestic absurdity. Steele Rudd captures the raw grit of late-nineteenth-century pioneer life through episodic comic sketches. The book has endured because it transforms the brutal reality of rural survival into resilient, warm-hearted humor without stripping away the genuine tragedy of poverty.

The Story

The narrative opens with the Rudd family arriving at their new bush holding on the Creek, coming from Stanthorpe by horse-drawn dray. Dad has gone ahead to build a two-room slab hut with an earthen floor, leveled periodically with a mixture of sand and cow dung. The family immediately sets to work fencing the land and planting barley, facing constant hunger and scraping by on stewed kangaroo-rat while Dad travels to earn money. Early on, the family confronts total ruin when drought hits, Mother falls ill, and Dad breaks down in despair, only for the eldest son, Dan, to return home with shearing earnings to save them.

Life on the selection is defined by an ongoing sequence of agricultural and financial crises. The family contends with wallabies eating their scarce crops, severe droughts that starve their cattle, and unhelpful local eccentrics like Cranky Jack, a wandering farmhand who axes a bedroom mirror believing he has killed his own father's ghost. The family tries everything to keep the farm solvent, from clearing land to running a local circus out of a tent made of corn sacks and green branches.

Financial relief remains fleeting. Dad's grand plans to expand the property are routinely smashed by debt. At one point, a bailiff arrives with a writ of fieri facias to seize their stock, driving away the family's cattle and horses while the family watches hopelessly from the fence line. To keep going, Dad turns to breaking in unreliable horses like the stubborn mare Nell, hunting bears for skins, and trying his hand at cattle dealing.

Interspersed with hardship are moments of community life and bush humor. The family hosts dances at Shingle Hut, where the kids play the concertina and neighbors gather to dance until the floorboards shake. Relationships mature over the years: the daughter Kate marries her tutor Sandy Taylor, while the sons grow into full partners in the farm's grueling physical labor. In the final chapter, during a boisterous Christmas gathering at the hut, Dan returns once more from the western woolsheds, exhausted and covered in grease, but stepping back seamlessly into the fold. Dad remains on the land after twenty years, having survived the wilderness through sheer persistence.

How It Unfolds

The voyage begins The family travels by dray to their bare selection on the Creek, arriving at a slab hut built by Dad. They clear the ground and plant their first crop of barley while waiting for Dad to return with money for fencing wire.

When the wolf visits Drought destroys the crops, Mother falls gravely ill, and the family faces starvation with Dad on the brink of complete despair. The eldest son Dan returns from shearing with money, rescuing the household from immediate ruin.

Misfortunes at the Overhaul Dad enters their quiet mare Bess into a local horse race, only for the horse to finish dead last. A drunk Dad gets into altercations with spectators before being driven home in his dray, declaring horse racing to be a fraud.

Cranky Jack takes residence A erratic stranger named Jack is brought in to do heavy farm labor and gets locked in the barn after a delusion. He eventually escapes, smashes a mirror with an axe to kill a perceived ghost, and quietly goes back to digging post-holes.

The bailiff strikes Dad's ambition to take up more land collapses when a law officer arrives to serve a writ for unpaid debts. The family stands by the fence in silence as their horses and cows are rounded up and driven off the property.

Christmas at Shingle Hut Neighbors gather at the slab house to celebrate with music, dancing, and high spirits despite their ongoing poverty. The family reunites as Dan walks back in from the sheep stations, bringing the twenty-year saga full circle.

The People

• Dad (Murtagh Joseph Rudd): The stubborn, driven patriarch who wants to turn the wild bush into a prosperous farm. Stymied by debt, bad weather, and terrible luck, he maintains an aggressive optimism that often collapses into fiery outbursts or private despair before he picks himself up again.
• Mother: The patient, practical heart of the household who wants stability and food for her children. She endures severe illness, isolation, and chronic shortages, supporting Dad's wild plans while maintaining hospitality for any traveler who passes their door.
• Dave: The hard-working, mostly silent eldest remaining son who wants to do his work without being bothered. Constantly thwarted by broken equipment and farm accidents, he responds to disasters with exasperated silence or elaborate cursing.
• Joe: The youngest boy, an energetic, mischievous lad who wants adventure and food. He frequently gets into trouble, whether getting kicked by cattle, tricking Cranky Jack, or grabbing the last scone off the table.

In Its Own Voice

"The floor was earth; but Dad had a mixture of sand and fresh cow-dung with which he used to keep it level."

The narrator describes the humble, hand-built conditions of their initial two-room slab hut on the Creek.

"He slaved from daylight till dark; keeps no Sunday; knows no companion; lives chiefly on meat and machine oil; domiciles in the barn; and has never asked for a rise in his wages."

The narrator outlines the bizarre, untiring routine of their unstable farmhand, Cranky Jack.

"Then the bailiff's man rounded up the cows and the horses, and Dad and the lot of us leant against the fence and in sadness watched Polly and old Poley and the rest for the last time pass out the slip-rails."

The family watches their entire stock taken away to settle debts, crushing Dad's expansion schemes.

What It's Really About

Beneath its slapstick humor and rustic character sketches, the book is a gritty meditation on land ownership and human endurance. It explores the extreme vulnerability of working-class settlers trying to carve an existence out of an unforgiving climate with minimal capital. The narrative questions whether hard manual labor is truly enough to achieve independence in a system stacked toward debt, bailiffs, and unpredictable nature. It celebrates the deep bonds of family and rural solidarity that allow people to maintain their dignity, sanity, and humor when faced with economic ruin and physical isolation.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate authentic regional literature, historical pioneer narratives, and unvarnished folk humor will find this book deeply rewarding. Reading it feels like sitting on the porch of a bush shanty listening to an old-timer recount family legends with a mix of affection, blunt honesty, and dry comedic timing.

The prose moves quickly through brief, self-contained chapters, making it accessible despite its age. Readers should be prepared for period difficulties, including raw nineteenth-century bush dialect, archaic agricultural terms, and occasional off-hand violence or rough treatment of animals common to frontier life. There are no romanticized, sanitized views of nature here; the bush is dusty, hot, and unforgiving. What stays with you is the sheer tenacity of the Rudd family—their ability to dance to a battered concertina in a dirt-floor hut after losing their entire herd of cattle. It stands as a foundational monument of Australian working-class literature.