Cirrus@Austlit

'The Selways were introduced [...] neither as prospectors who struck lucky nor as ambitious farmers. Arriving in the country in the 1870s their one aim was to amass capital and get back to the old country leaving an unfriendly climate and alien society behind for ever. But it is never quite possible for them to leave; and as their plans for return are pushed further and further into the future, the sound of a mocking bird drives home the title's meaning.

'The episode is solidly constructed to convey information about the management of land. Jack Selway arrives in Sydney and promptly falls into the hands of a group of profiteers who dispatch him into the bush to take charge of a smallholding. His belief that they have treated him generously is soon exploded; he learns that he has been made a "dummy" in a campaign against a "squatter".'

Source:

'Clarity in Saga of Australia', The Times, 26 January 1959, p.6.

'The Long Summer [...] succeeded to some extent in avoiding the anxiety to impart information on all conceivable subjects connected with Australian life which marred the first episode, though some sizable chunks of constitutional history were conveyed during the beginning in rather awkward exchanges designed, ostensibly, to put the son newly returned from Cambridge in touch with local affairs or explain to the farmers what was going on in the centres of government. On the whole, however, education had given place to the exploration of personal tensions between members of the Selwood [sic] family: two brothers in love with the same girl, who happens to be the wife of one of them; a sister taking up with the local bad lot out of boredom, and so on.'

Source:

'The Long Summer', The Times, 2 February 1959, p.12.

'The third section of the cycle, The Lost Years, saw Selways of three and ultimately four generations dealing with changing conditions during the depression and the immediately pre-war period. By now the family history is so intricate that anyone coming fresh to the series must have been sadly mystified last night by frequent veiled references to events that have gone before, while those who saw the earlier sections had to spend the first half hour sorting out who had grown up into whom.

'On the other hand, there has been a sufficient proliferation of Selways in the intervening years to permit of more variety than was possible before. They now move quite freely between Sydney and the old homestead at Billabilla. There are errant aunts and their offsprings to be reclaimed, a politician uncle to be heard on the radio, and some suggestion, now that they have largely abandoned their vocation as Archers of the Outback, ever ready with useful hints about the intricacies of sheep-rearing, that there is life beyond the confines of a sheep-farm.'

Source:

'The Lost Years', The Times, 9 February 1959, p.12.

'Because the Selways have been the chief characters in the story since it began in 1873, Miss Foster felt obliged, on parting from them in 1958, to tell us something about all the surviving members, as well as to remind us of figures in the family's past. All this seemed to be a routine matter. Her preoccupation with the Selways generally made it impossible here to give the necessary space to what promised to be the main incident, the overcoming of prejudice entertained by some "old" Australians against the "new".'

Source:

'Full Circle in New South Wales', The Times, 16 February 1959, p.12.