non-fictionHere is a robust picture of an Australia which few people know. Jeff Carter writes in his usual forthright and picturesque style about the people he met when he turned his back on the cities the true individualists such as the maker of flint-lock muskets, the bird-imitator, the builder of dry stone walls. He tells also of how he and his family took over an overgrown farm in the hills, and of their fashioning of a new and richly satisfying way of life far from traffic-lights and smog. It is a full-flavoured book of the open air, of the sturdiness and self-reliance of those to whom achievements mean more than possessions. And if, in reading it, you should wish that you could live in the same way, Jeff Carter gives some tantalizing advice on how you can build a new life for yourself in company with those of STOUT HEARTS AND LEATHERY HANDS. (cover)foxground south coast nsw, country living