Book Review No 15: Educating Alice by Alice Greenup

At 18 Melburnian Alice decided to quit uni and travel around Australia with a friend by motorbike. During her travels she stops in to see a family friend in Mackay, Queensland and on a whim applies for a temporary job as a governess on a remote cattle station. It is here that she meets a young jackaroo named Rick and from that moment her life is changed forever.

Theirs is not an easy courtship - Alice returns to Melbourne for a while, before transferring her studies to Brisbane and Rick spends a year away working in the very remote Kimberley's. Although initially drawn to the outback life, it takes Alice a while to fully adapt and accept that if she marries Rick their lives will be forever tied to the land. As newlyweds they take a huge gamble with the purchase of their own property and face many obstacles as the unrelenting drought brings them to their knees. Just when it seems things are going their way Alice is involved in a devastating accident and it is only with huge amounts of courage and tenacity that she makes a good recovery before going on to give birth to three children.

I thought this was a very interesting story that was well written and easy to read. Alice gives an honest and humourous account of learning the ways of the bush and trying to fit in, while sometimes making a fool of herself. She is also very candid about the difficulties - this is not a one-sided, romantic, rose-coloured glasses view - admitting that she questioned her decision several times and was not always easy to live with when times were tough. Balancing that though is her obvious love of her new life and family and you can tell she does not regret her decision to stick it out.

The book actually begins with her accident as a prologue and then explores the back story. While I thought this worked really well, I did think the section after the accident was not as detailed as it could have been. It was also written a couple of years ago but only published now, so the last couple of years are glossed over in just a couple of pages, which I found a little disappointing. I would have enjoyed more detail about that time frame to bring things right up to date.

Educating Alice also highlights just how difficult life on the land can be and how little regard we sometimes give to how our food makes it to the supermarket shelves and ultimately our tables.  It also illustrates just how devastating unrelenting drought can be and how many farmers have to sit back and watch their hopes and dreams blow away in the dust when rain just doesn't appear. Some have to subsist for years without any real income or family members have to work away just to keep food on the table.

All in all a very interesting and inspiring story.