In the evenings we huddled around the radio, hushed and hushing each other, clinging to every word of our favourite programs. Most favourite of all, and legendary, as far as Australian radio was concerned, was Dad and Dave. It had been popular for a long time. Steele Rudd had written several volumes, many of them illustrated by the great Norman Lindsay, of life on the farm—On Our Selection being the first. There was usually a humorous stream but it was far from the outright slapstick of the films and radio plays. In fact, Rudd was rather serious in presenting the various stages of finding virgin territory, settling and stocking it and building up until finally Dad even becomes a political figure. The only worthwhile book I know of written from the point of view of the squatters. But television was on the way, and these cosy evenings sitting silent with heads bowed while the cracking sound of His Master’s Voice played on our imaginations were about to become a thing of the past.