{"id":524,"date":"2014-11-19T22:54:22","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T22:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selfpublishingforthetechnicallychallenged.com\/?page_id=524"},"modified":"2019-10-01T13:06:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T13:06:11","slug":"reviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviews The Worst Country in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Worst Country in the World brings our early history to gritty life<\/h3>\n

Justine Doherty,\u00a0Hawkesbury Gazette,\u00a0<\/em>23 Sep 2016, 3:16 p.m.<\/p>\n

AN ENGLISHWOMAN who appeared in Skippy in the 1960s\u00a0has written an extraordinary book on the tale of her ancestor Mary Pitt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Migrating\u00a0to a country on the other side of the world which was proclaimed as almost uninhabitable by Europeans, this\u00a0widow in her early 50s took her chances\u00a0in a penal colony, bringing her\u00a0five children here only 13 years after the colony began.<\/p>\n

Historic bodice-ripper novels have nothing on this real-life tale.\u00a0It was Mary\u2019s good fortune to have a cousin married to Horatio\u00a0Nelson which heavily\u00a0influenced her fate, and allowed her, according to family legend,\u00a0to be put up by the\u00a0Governor of NSW, Philip Gidley King at Parramatta on her arrival and for a while thereafter.<\/p>\n

Author Patsy Trench (see picture bottom right) has researched her book meticulously which is written as part novel, part historical record. Her depth of\u00a0research and transparency about where she\u2019s taking an educated guess will keep Hawkesbury historians satisfied, and she keeps the story cracking along for everyone else by dramatising\u00a0critical scenes as in a novel. These are delicately and excellently done, and there is no jolt at the transitions.<\/p>\n

Patsy takes the reader along with her on\u00a0her hunt for details of her ancestor\u2019s life in the early Sydney colony.\u00a0Her style is chatty while still rigorous with facts, so though it is loaded with historical detail, it is fascinating from the start.<\/p>\n

For anyone with far-reaching antecedents in the Hawkesbury, this book will be a tour de force as due to the few settlers here back then, your ancestors may well be mentioned\u00a0in it!<\/p>\n

It will be particularly gratifying for Hawkesbury readers as we also know all the places mentioned, both in the tale of the past and when it\u2019s in the present, such as when Patsy visits\u00a0a farm in Agnes Banks, seeking the site of Mary\u2019s early land grant. Mary was\u00a0one of the first women to be granted\u00a0land in her own right,\u00a0on the Hawkesbury River.<\/p>\n

Patsy shares her recent family history as well so you know who the Australian descendants of Mary were.\u00a0Famous historic figures crop up in brushes with Patsy\u2019s\u00a0family. Her\u00a0aunty Lorraine acted in \u201cStrike me Lucky\u201d with Mo (Roy Rene) and Patsy\u2019s Australian mother\u00a0was a good friend of Charles Kingsford Smith, (though the historic\u00a0family connection to Horatio Nelson trumps\u00a0them all).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story about migration,\u201d Patsy said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about Mary but about my mother, an actress\u00a0who left\u00a0Sydney to live in London in the 1920s, and about me. I migrated from London to Sydney as a 10\u00a0pound Pom in 1968.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0intended to appeal to anyone who is\u00a0interested in Australia\u2019s\u00a0colonial history, so it ended up a mix of fact, fiction and personal\u00a0observations of a country\u00a0and its people\u00a0that I\u2019ve known and loved for half a century.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Royal Australian Historical Society liked the book so much it has given her a\u00a0grant to do further research into the Pitt family history.<\/p>\n

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\"Family<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Historical<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Worst Country in the World brings our early history to gritty life Justine Doherty,\u00a0Hawkesbury Gazette,\u00a023 Sep 2016, 3:16 p.m. AN ENGLISHWOMAN who appeared in Skippy in the 1960s\u00a0has written an extraordinary book on the… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3005,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/524\/revisions\/3005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}