So far from Skye

by Judith O'Neill

A story based on the real voyage of "The Georgiana", by an author whose own ancestors were among the crofters who had to emigrate from Skye to Australia. The author also wrote "The Message", "Deepwater" and "Jess and the River Kids".

Genres: Childrens, Historical Fiction, Fiction

204 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 1993

Reviews

[Shonaigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that is set at the time of the Highland Clearances. A crofting community is torn from their island home. They are shipped to the other side of the world, to a new life in Australia. It is a history lesson in a book without it feeling so. The book focuses, primarily on a family- their journey and new life. Australia is very different to Scotland and is encountering it's own problems. Big divides and violence with the Aboriginal peoples being forced into slavery. The newcomers find themselves in a country of unrest and they must stick together. Remember this being a deep and thought provoking book which encouraged me to find out more information on the events that it describes.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure how this book got to my bookshelf. I had thought that it was some required reading of my sister from high school but then found it was published 1992 so way too late. The pages were very brown and spotted so I just assumed it was much older. And the writing style also fitted the 70s more than the 90s.

It was commended in Australian Children’s Literature in 1992 but although it described early colonial life in Victoria, it was much more consumed with the crofter’s life in Skye and the long sea voyage to Australia. There was too much Gaelic and Psalm singing, which while it might have been indicative of the Scottish settlers, would be confusing and uninteresting to any Australian child who might be keen to learn about a small part of Australia’s early white settlement.

[Amy W · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a children's book I picked up in a charity shop. It was a fairly simple story, but about a time I previously knew nothing about.

I found the emigration of people from small Scottish villages to the other side of the world in Australia really interesting and something I went on to read more about online. This book is told from a child's perspective of her family uprooting and making the journey over the sea to a completely unknown place, in hopes of a better life.

The best parts of the book were leaving Scotland and the journey on the ship. Once they got to Australia it ran out of steam a little. A bit of insight was given into setting up on new land and different animals and birds etc, but it might have been nice to have a chapter a few years into the future to know whether they'd truly settled in. I think that would have finished off the book nicely.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this because it is a historical recreation of the journey made by Scottish crofters during the clearances from the early 1800 to the mid 1800s. Highlanders were uprooted from their centuries held homes and sent to populate and work the Australian and (I thik( Canadian colonies. My family came from this background and I have been reading anything I can on what it was like and how it happened, out of a purely personal desire to know what they went through. This is fiction but the author used impressive sources and assistance and it seems to match, as much as possible, the historical and original writings I had already read. Because I also like to write and I can feel through my own readings of history how a world can be recreated from a set of descriptive facts, I think, cautiously reading this fictionalised account fleshed out (keeping the word cautious in mind here...) the picture that had been developing in my head. Any review I give has to be read through this intention - so I can say that the sources used by the author are reassuring, and that the picture that grew in my head did not feel manipulated or biased. I really enjoyed it.

[Charlie Coupland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read when I was about 10, it was the first book that ever made me cry.