Recounting the author’s formative years in Western Australia, this confronting, revealing, and frequently hilarious memoir brings an unforgettable cast of rogues and renegades to life. Revealing a community of exiles from across the globe—including Italians, Yugoslavs, Britons, criminals, ex-servicemen, and drunks—this recollection demonstrates how many came to the tough northeastern goldfields only to find both a fresh start as well as an abyss. Depicting the dramas of the town as they unfold, this chronicle describes the pit ponies that lived in the mines and went blind when they resurfaced, the men who lay in the bushes outside the author’s house waiting to jump his stepfather, and the women who dispensed advice on the polio” with their cheese and lettuce sandwiches. From the priest who wouldn’t dance with women in public but bedded half the town in private to the cantankerous mother who refused to toe the line of 1950s Australia