The Swagman & the Parson

This book contains two complementary stories written by two generations of the one family. It spans three centuries – from the 1860s to the present day, 2016. The swagman, Sully, and Russ Gibson, parson, were both born in the nineteenth century, though several decades apart. New South Wales was then a colonial state of Great Britain. The tale of the swagman was penned in the 1970s by my father. A child of my parents’ older age, I was not born when the events of the swagman’s tale unfolded. Nor was I familiar with south and western New South Wales, where many of the incidents took place. The second half of this book is partly a narrative of my journey to those places. It also incorporates my parents’ oral memories recorded on tape in the early 1980s.