Roland Rocchiccioli And be Home Before Dark

Annotation

My mother was born in Laverton, the wildest town in the west. At one time it was claimed the only person buried in the cemetery who died of natural causes was a sixweekold baby. I was born in Agnew, a shanty goldmining town on the edge of the remote and inhospitable Great Victoria Desert, population 200. But it was in Gwalia where our story started to resemble anything; Gwalia, where the Sons of Gwalia mine, with its huge black smokestack belching into the cloudless blue sky, kept vigil over all of us misfits, migrants and malcontents. The northeastern goldfields of Western Australia gathered in all manner of exiles from across the globe: Italians, Yugoslavs, Britons; criminals, exservicemen, drunks, journeymen; those wanting to keep their heads down and those determined to hold them high. What they found there was both a fresh start and an abyss, where troubles underground were brought up to the surface and played out in the dusty streets.