Your Hills Are Too High: Roslyn Taylor

A charming account of life in Australia in the 1920s and 1930s, the recollections of a girl, the child of Yorkshire parents, who saw the world with a wry sense of humour and an irrepressible vitality. This was a time when children were shushed if they asked awkward questions and were encouraged to emulate the feminine in all things - an ideal too restrictive for a girl with a vivid imagination and a strong sense of self. 'We had art once a week and although I loved drawing, the lessons were so unimaginative I hated them. The teacher gave out books of rough dark paper and thick coloured chalks. Every drawing had to be exactly the same. A landscape was a line of dark blue hills across the middle of the paper ("Roslyn Downes, your hills are too high"), a straight road in bright brick red ("Stop winding that road!"), a tree and some grass ("A haystack? What on earth do you think you're doing?") It's no wonder that Taylor went on to write the quintessential rebellion poem Please Don't Ask Me To Your Tupperware Party Sharleen.