The Tales of Swaggy Joe

It all started in the 1970s when my own children were on the threshold of adulthood. The Roving Roo adventures were created around 1989 after a trip to the USA, where my daughter introduced me to a mascot named Kirby Kangaroo.

Swaggy Joe became the romantic character of my childhoodwhen itinerant workers still walked the roads. I have fond memories of some of them, notably an old timer of Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, named Brian Rice, who my Grandma Lyle employed in exchange for food and rudimentary accommodation in the back shed. Another was a chap named Ruben Webb, who my dad gave work to at our home. He worked well and then wandered his way. Great icons of honesty, integrity, and the freedom to live as they would were both of these men and others of their ilk.

I recognize that the normal way of life for me as a child has slipped by as prosperity and technology altered what my grandchildren know as their way of life. I felt that it could assist the new generations if they could be given some insights into life as it once was before their time, albeit in romantic tales of the imagination. For me to express this, I found the lyric ballad came naturally to be the utility of sharing. Although untrained as a writer and communicator, the urge to share a little of what was or maybe was prompted this little booklet.

I hope that the readers, those young and those not so, enjoy the unique sharing reading provides.