Boy Alone

by Reginald Ottley, Clyde Pearson (Illustrator)

Hardcover book.

Genres: Australia, Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Born in England, Reginald Ottley lived and worked in Australia for much of the middle part of his life. During the 1960s he began writing children's novels, his most famous being the Yamboorah series which was set on an Australian cattle ranch and made authentic by his personal experiences.

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A boy who never gets called by name works as a wood and water joey on a large station in the outback. This book and its sequel The Roan Colt of Yamboorah are largely autobiographical and full of perhaps more realism than some children would enjoy.

In this first book, the boy helps an old man called Kanga rear a pup which he calls Rags and looks after his mother Brolga. When the time comes for Brolga to return to the hard life among Kanga's pack of working dogs she is not surprisingly heartbroken. The boy scrubs algae off water troughs and chops wood unceasingly, friendless but never lonely because he has Rags as a companion. His food is largely meat as the station kills its own beef and sheep. When he gets a day off he has no plans, so he takes a lunch and water and heads out into the sandhills, where he meets an Aboriginal who claims to be about to spear a kangaroo. Watching the roos grazing, the boy asks him not to and shares his own lunch.

Then Kanga announces that he is going to take Rags into the pack of working dogs, now he is big enough. The boy can't think of any way around this so by night he takes a billy can of water and walks out into the sandhills with Rags. We can foresee trouble.
This book is excellently written and brings everything to life, from the goanna living under the woodpile to the giant centipede with the poisonous bite.

For those who want to read a girl's experience of growing up on such a station, try Mary Elwyn Pachett who wrote Ajax the Warrior about her dogs and Tam the Untamed about her horses.
Other excellent fiction for young people in this mode includes Pachett's The Brumby and Come Home, Brumby or Elyne Mitchell's The Colt at Taparoo.

[Lindsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Starts by killing a litter of puppies and continues with a string of pointless anecdotes about this boy's life on an Australian cattle farm in the 1930s. End wasn't totally depressing but overall a boring and unsatisfying read.

[Shelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started with the third book in the series first (Rain Comes to Yamboorah). I am glad I did.
I enjoyed this book too, but the character development and tenderness shines brighter in book three. I'll be reading book two (The Roan Colt) next.

[Arthur Banos · Rating 3 out of 5]

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