Angela Wales was one of five children who grew up on an isolated Walcha property after their Sydney based father was told to move to the country for his health.
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Her sister Katrina Blomfield still lives here, as do many others who remember the pioneering tree-change Wales family, and last Friday night Ms Wales (who now divides her time between North America and Australia) returned to the town to sign copies of her first published book - a memoir based on her rural childhood - and the Walcha Sports Club was packed. Armidale based bookseller The Reader's Companion sold out of the book in the first hour of signing.
When the Wales family arrived in Walcha in 1953, 'they had no electricity, no running water, no telephone and no choice but to make that tangle of bush their home'.
While many people in the room at the local book launch share similar memories, Ms Wales (who has wanted to write since she was in primary school) said her upbringing was remarkable because of the events the family faced.
"This book about growing up in Walcha and the various things that happened to us was the book that I really always wanted to write, and I had to get that one out of the way before I wrote anything else," Ms Wales said.
"When I was a young adult living in Sydney, I just felt it was a really remarkable childhood from so many points of view - there were so many things that happened.
I just felt it was a really remarkable childhood from so many points of view
- Angela Wales
"When you're in Sydney, everything works - the lights turn on and off, the toilet just flushes, and that became even more pronounced when I went to America in 1990."
When she was 41 years old, Ms Wales moved to the US to become executive director of the Writers Guild Foundation in Los Angeles after a decade of working as the executive director of the Australian Writers Guild.
"I realised we had a childhood full of incidents," she said.
"The creek that came up and the medical emergencies when you couldn't get across it. We had one dog that was killed by a kangaroo and another one that was eaten by the Blomfield's pet carpet snake, and the matriarch pig that came and lay on our mothers bed and wouldn't get off.
"So part of the book is a little bit Ma and Pa Kettle - but then there is also the hard slog of working on a property.
"We didn't have running water, so we had to get up early every morning to get buckets from the tank. I just thought there is not enough written about that way of life.
"After the war in the 1950s, there was a lot of making do, and a lot of older people still remember those days."
A circle of pine trees, a sagging wire fence, and a roof that was once painted red. ‘There it is,’ said Dad.
The book was released in March, and so far the response by readers and critics alike has been outstanding.
"I had one guy email me yesterday to say it should be compulsory reading for every Australian student," Ms Wales said.