Southern Tablelands author Dion Perry will launch his latest autobiographical novel Island Life in Crookwell.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
He will be joined by other local authors, including Elizabeth Egan, at the Senior Citizens Club on December 5 from 2pm.
It is the fourth book for the Golspie author who has also published Target 2013, Alien Love and Satellite Attack.
Perry said the novel is an autobiography of his years spent on Clarke Island between 1984 and 1990. It was published by Ginninderra Press and is available in paperback.
The novel was described on the publisher's website by Australian author Michael Veitch, "utterly charming and immensely readable".
"In Island Life, Dion Perry gives us a true 'Swiss Family Robinson' tale set in one of the most remote and beautiful parts of Australia, the Bass Strait Islands."
The novel is set on the remote Clarke Island in the Bass Strait off the north-east coast of Tasmania. Perry and his family moved there in 1984 and spent the next six years there.
He described their survival as one of living in harmony with the island in a semi self-sufficient lifestyle. They had to grow an edible garden, milk goats, and learn to live off the bounty that the land and sea provided.
"They arrived with little provisions and few possessions to an old farmhouse invested with poisonous black house spiders and overrun with mice. With no way off, all they could do was make the best of it," the blurb reads.
"Over the next six years, with little or no outside help, they had to contend with a blocked septic tank, a bee swarm in the house chimney, broken machinery, telephone outages, cantankerous horses, wild cattle that could not be mustered and the extreme isolation of living on an island.
"For one boy, living on Clarke Island was a once in a lifetime opportunity and this is his story."
Following a talk on the novel, Perry will be available for a question and answer and book signing.
Read also: Goulburn to celebrate Australia Day 2021
