Moonbird People

by Patsy Adam Smith

Rigby Limited, 1965, [First Edition], black and white photographic plates, illustrated endpapers (maps), illustrated boards, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges, and corners, institute stamp to half title page, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping and chipping to edges and corners  (See photographs)

“Moonbirds – the migratory mutton birds – homeless, it is said, since the moon fell off the face of the earth and left them behind.
Patsy Adam Smith was sent by an Australian magazine to the Furneaux group of islands, in Bass Strait, to write a documentary feature about these birds and the people whose very existence depended upon them.  The photographer who went with her stayed three days, in what he called “the end of the flaming earth”.  Patsy Adam Smith remained for years.
For six of these years when was a member of the crew of a coastal treader – cooking, taking her trick at the wheel, and helping in any other way the captain ordered.  For another four years she wandered about the islands, living with the Cape Barreners, descendants of Tasmanian aboriginal women abducted by sealers from their now vanished tribes.  She travelled with families whose forefathers settled in the islands before either Melbourne or Sydney was founded. "The Islanders have a saying “The islands have got a holt on yer”.  From the time Patsy Adam Smith smelt the oil oozing through the staves of the great wooden casks and listened to the folk-history of the islands they had a “holt” on her.”

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