On Our Selection

On Our Selection is the breakthrough work of Australian writer Steele Rudd (born Arthur Hoey Davis, 1868–1935), published in 1899 by the Bulletin newspaper in Sydney. It consists of twenty-six linked short pieces narrated in the first person by a child, telling of twenty years of the Rudd family's struggle to carve a homestead out of the Queensland bush: Father, Mother, and a brood of children arrive by wagon from Stanthorpe at a creek, build a crude hut of two rooms with a dirt floor and slabs so gapped you can see the stars through them, and battle drought, wallabies and kangaroos, debt, and an assortment of neighbors while clearing land and growing corn. Each piece centers on a small family episode—the first harvest, waiting in vain for the deeds, a kangaroo hunt, a snakebite, sister Kate's wedding, the death of old Bob the horse, running a circus, buying a cow, Christmas—and Father's blind optimism and stubborn endurance in poverty, alongside the children's mischief and the comedy of farm work, are written so that readers laugh out loud, though beneath the laughter lie the real hardship and isolation of the pioneers. The book is dedicated "to the pioneers of Australia," and especially "to Dad." Within four years of publication it had printed twenty thousand copies; by 1940 sales reached about a quarter of a million, and the character "Dad Dave" became a household figure in Australia, later adapted for the stage and screen.