My Mate Gidgee An outback story of yard yakka and murder

This is an authentic, entertaining, sometimes shocking, often funny yarn from Outback Australia. Tom and Gidgee, best mates, toil and laugh together for decades, in the shearing sheds and stockyards of the challenging, semi-arid Western Division. Constantly tested by extremes of Nature, their huge capacity for both work and laughter helps them cope with everything that’s thrown at them. They support each other through personal tragedies. When Gidgee is wrongly imprisoned, Tom saves his soul and his future. When Tom, tough and funny, is driven to become a homicidal madman, through treachery from within his family, Gidgee will sacrifice himself to save his mate from going to jail. The humor features the coarse, often ribald yarns and jokes of the stockyards and shearing sheds, in an era when that was a man’s world, and the chauvo attitudes which were normal then, were balanced by chivalry. This is a bloke’s book, that will also be thoroughly enjoyed by broad-minded women.

A former jillaroo, horse breaker and bull-catcher, Sandy Thorne is a bush poet and Australia’s favorite yarn spinner. She is the author of Bonzer and Old-Timers- Magnificent Stories from Mighty Australians as well as My Mate Gidgee. Sandy has performed at countless festivals, concerts, conferences and other events as well as on TV and radio all over Australia, New Zealand and the US. She launched her first book in 1980 by ripping the top off a stubby with her teeth. Her books have sold over 460,000 copies. She may not be exactly ‘literary’ but she spins a great yarn full of humor, and life.