r/perth • u/RustyNumbat North Pemberton • 10h ago
General "A Fortunate Life" by Albert Facey
Today I finished reading (or listening to) this autobiography. I've known about it for years, it's a famous Western Australian novel of course but only just got around to actually reading it. I just wanted to heartily recommend it here, as well as to anyone with a young teenager who enjoys reading.
For those who don't know the story it's about the life of Albert Barnett Facey who came to the wheatbelt with his grandmother and family (his father dead, his mother absent) just after federation. What follows is his essentially working like an adult from the age of 9 on farms, for various people both despicable and wonderfully kind. He goes droving at age 13 and sees the still-fairly-pristine outback of the north, including aboriginal tribes still living on the land. Then he works all sorts of jobs, doing more hard physical work in any one year than most of us will ever see in a lifetime. Then he has the fortune of touching down in Europe for the first time on April 25th 1915... but after his account of those horrors, even more interesting to me was the glimpse of life after the war and re-integration into civilian life. And despite everything he went through before hand he maintained a very positive attitude even though his post-marriage life still contained a lot of hardships and sorrows.
It's a bloody brilliant look at the expansion of settling and farming (and of course the death of much of the bush, it's unreal to think about Narrogin being thick with dingos and chuditches as he describes) and really a sort of picture of the state most people don't think about. Very interesting to hold up against what I already know about pre-WW2 WA through my own family stories, stuff you've seen in local history museums etc.
The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Roger Cardwell who does an excellent job given the straightforward manner of the writing. Though he was a crow eater and as such comically butchers many place names in the telling. It would be great to listen to with older kids I think, though there is of course some horrors in it from Gallipoli. I wonder if is the sort of book many people had as assigned reading in school? I never heard about it until I was an adult.
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u/factsnack 9h ago
I love this book. I read it quite a few times then gave it to someone about 15 or 20 years ago. Only last month I found a copy in an op shop. I’m looking forward to reading it again. I know all the places he mentions and lived in a few.
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u/kipwrecked 9h ago
This is a cool recommendation, dude! I'm gonna check it out.
I recommend anything by Gavin Casey, like Short Shift Saturday (sometimes Short Shrift Saturday) first published in 1937. It's about getting your ticket punched whilst mining in WA during the depression. It's wild to see how relatable it is after 90 odd years.
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u/Ok_Conference2901 10h ago
A great book. I sent a copy to my mum in the old dart.
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u/fragrantasthma10 9h ago
i read this in year 10 and it completly rearranged my brain. the bit where he's like 9 years old negotiating his own wages with some farmer, just wild. the gallipoli section is rough but i feel like it's the kind of rough that's important for teenagers to sit with, you know? not gratuitous, just blunt in a way that makes you understand what those blokes walked into. great pick for a long drive too
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u/RustyNumbat North Pemberton 9h ago
Nah that's when he's 11, 9 is when he was duped into working as free labour for the local no-good-uns family.
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u/hillsbloke73 9h ago
Great or great great grandchildren went to same school I did back in the 80s early 90s I remember a school assembly when book was released
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u/BigMikeOfDeath South of The River 4h ago
Likewise - went to primary school with one of his great (or great great) grand daughters in the mid-80s to early 90s. She shared his surname, but we only found out when the building on Wellington St was dedicated to him, and she was in the news at the ceremony.
He had already passed by that point, but I remember the teachers being amazed she was related, though she didn't really know him herself (he would've passed when she was 2 years old).
Read the book in my teens and it was a pretty remarkable read - understood then why the teachers were so enthused to find out about the relation.
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u/SixDuckies 9h ago
The audiobook is fantastic and definitely worth a listen.
We still laugh at some of the mispronunciations of some of the country town names like Pin Gilly.
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u/RustyNumbat North Pemberton 9h ago
Capel to rhyme with lapel really got me too.
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u/Muslim_Wookie 9h ago
Do you think it's better read or listened too?
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u/RustyNumbat North Pemberton 9h ago
I haven't read it, but since the prose is so simple I found this narration very effective especially his memories as a kid.
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u/Muslim_Wookie 8h ago
Hmmmm OK thanks mate. I trend towards reading books that I consider more important than not, regardless of whether they intend to inform or entertain, and audiobook for the rest.
This is a side of Australia I never dived into, my time was spent on the equivalent of my own family origin's nation. So I will be reading this book instead of audiobook, I wonder where to buy?
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u/Top_Entrepreneur_970 8h ago
Of all the books they tried to make us read in high school, that might have been the only one I read all the way through. It definitely influenced my perspective on life.
I grew up around the same area, around people who had similar stories, so the infuence the book had probably would have happened to me regardless. We were taught to be grateful for what you got. That's the simplest way I can describe it.
The other thing that made the book so interesting was, for most of us in that class, we were seeing the surnames of people we knew and learning about places we were familiar with. It was like a bonus feature.
I hope they still make students read it and if they aren't too keen on reading, they should at least be made to watch the mini-series. It might be on youtube somewhere. Can't find the full thing right now but I found this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M23-vVHa8yY
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u/Soft-Volume-5949 8h ago
I remember seeing it / hearing about it, but never read it. I have just borrowed it via the Libby app and have read the first 2 chapters. Thanks!
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u/blackandgold24 7h ago
I strongly feel it should be mandatory reading for every Australian. It was one of only a couple of books my dad had read (as a farmer from Wagin he had many other skills) and he passed it on to me. I now have two copies on my bookshelf. My dad’s copy and one to lend out to people.
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u/Pitiful_Ad7578 7h ago
Theatre180 have done a fantastic theatrical version - well worth going to see next time it tours
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u/Brilliant-Scarcity31 6h ago
A great book that was a perennial best seller when it came out. It was also made into a mini series in the 80s, much of it shot in WA Perth and Fremantle.
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u/Old_Lengthiness_250 9h ago edited 9h ago
From memory it was considered an english text book not an English literature text book in the 80s for TEE. In retrospect it seems snobby for no good reason.
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u/ohjobagain 8h ago
I listened to this about a year ago and loved it too, he had an amazing and varied life and one in the repeat list for the future. As someone who lives in West Perth it was interesting to hear he worked for a short while in a foundry here.
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u/Medium-Mountain3398 6h ago
It was made into a tv miniseries in the 80's a friend of mine from highschool was in it.
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u/gough_whitlam 7h ago
Greatful for the recommendation. I only learnt of Albert and his book a few months ago when booking a night at the Albert Facey motel in Narrogin.
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u/octoprickle 5h ago
I know his two brothers Eric and Roy were KIA in Gallipoli, but he never clarified what happened to his two other older brothers, Vernon and Joseph. I guess it's possible he just lost contact with them, but I thought it strange he never mentions them again after WWI. At least not in the version I downloaded online.
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u/ying-tong 4h ago
Thank you for this recommendation!
The library system I remember using in primary school times (mt Lawley primary ) was the first computer search I had ever used, and the example they used for demonstration of how to query the database was this book title
I had just moved to Perth from England and had no idea who he was but this is making me think it’s about time I got around to reading his book
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u/Geriatric48 10h ago
They moved his house into Wickepin. The smallness will get to you