Once a Pommie Swagman - Nick Thomas

Sydney 1961. Two bored, broke, naive and ill-prepared sixteen-year-old Pommie-born boys set off on the spur of the moment to make their fortune. In six months they thumb, bum and meander across four thousand miles, from Sydney to Magnetic Island, Julie Creek to Leeton. The author was one of those boys. This heart-warming memoir also provides a social history of the day, including an insight into three distinct types of swaggies. As well as the original fair-dinkum swaggies who were homeless loners who kept themselves, to themselves, there was a second layer of swaggies who were itinerant workers. The last group of swaggies were the newly emancipated young from cities who didnt want the nine-to-five grind lives that their parents lived. In a time when hitch-hiking was recognised and encouraged as a legitimate form of transport and strangers were viewed with curiosity rather than suspicion, the two young and trusting boys hop in a truck and ride around Australia.