Cirrus@Austlit

'An Australian woman spends two months in Italy in the summer of 2017. As she wends her way to a literary conference in Ravello where will will speak about Basho, she records the joys and foibles of Bella Italia - the characters she meets, the food she enjoys and the art she sees. The haiku she writes on return pay tribute to her poetic companion on her travels - Basho. From Sicily in the south to Monte Rossa in the north, the magnificent delights of Italy unfold, even though the tour is a humble one and not grand at all.'   (Publication summary)

'In the last decade of his long life, Wal Stubbings (1913-2014), retired Water side worker from the port of Brisbane, occupied himself with his life story. As a worker, and a militant one, he had already penned a number of short articles for his union, the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF, later the Maritime Union of Australia) and for the Communist Party of Australia (CPA, dissolved in 1991), and letters to the Courier-Mail. When asked to contribute to the Stubbings family history being compiled by a cousin in Melbourne, his taste for memoir was whetted and he continued on after the family history was published. Wal Stubbings knew that he had lived as a player in the political history of Australia and he wanted an autobiography that included his all-important family and his life as a militant worker.' (Introduction)
 

Epigraph:

… what we have loved

Others will love, and we will teach them how.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude xiv

'Wal Stubbings (1913-2014) was an Australian waterside worker for 40 years. Militant workers like him were demonised and accused of wrecking the country. So what was it like to be a wharfie? Especially one who visited the USSR, was involved in street marches, and was under ASIO surveillance yet survived with all his mental facilities intact to the ripe old age of 101? This is one man's journey through a tumultuous century.' (Publication summary)