Moonbird People by Patsy Adam Smith

Moonbird People

by Patsy Adam Smith

Seal Books, 1975, b/w photographs, paperback, ISBN 0851790240

Very Good Condition, faint water mark to top of flyleaf title page

'Moonbirds - the migatory mutton birds - homeless, it is said, since the moon fell off the face of the earth and left them behind.  Patsy Adam Smith was sent by an Australian magazine to the Furneaux group of islands, in Bass Strait, to write a documentary feature about these birds and the people whose very existence depended upon them.  The photographer who went with her stayed three days, in what he called "the end of the flaming earth".  Patsy Adam Smith remained for years.

For six of those years she was a member of the crew of a coastal trader - cooking, taking her trick at the wheel, and helping in any other way the captain ordered.  For another four years she wandered about the islands, living with the Cape Barreners, descendants of Tasmanian aboriginal women abducted by sealers from their now vanished tribes.  She travelled with families whose forefathers settled in the islands before either Melbourne or Sydney was founded...'