The Battlers Av Kylie Tennant

In 1939, with rumours of war circulating, the poor souls who have been displaced by the Great Depression are still on the tracks. Across New South Wales, a ragged army of those who ''battle'' for a living are still on the lookout for work, making things to sell, pursuing a con or busy planning a new one. ''Battlers'' not only struggle against all the elements which seem so set against them; ''battling'' is also cadging what you can in any dodge that offers, so that tonight''s camp might be a little bit more comfortable, or that there might be a little bit more than nothing to eat.Long, lanky, pale-haired Theodore Grimshaw, known to everyone as Snow, has left his wife and children at home in a country town to try to get some work. He suspects his wife likes it that way. On his journeying he meets Dancy Smith, known as The Stray. She is very young, equally thin and pale, and has struggled all her life. She says she wants nothing more than a new set of false teeth (her own are long gone),