*CANCELLED* Please join us for morning tea and a chat with author Ruth Pollock on Friday 26th May at 10.30am in our Port Macquarie Library.
Ruth was born in 1942 in the country town of Denmark, on the south coast of Western Australia. Being a farmer’s daughter, and her father instilling the love of country into her heart, she grew up with a respect for the natural environment and the beauty of rural surrounds. From her second day at school, Ruth wanted to be a teacher. Over the years her father often tried to discourage her by saying, “All the years of study and education will only be wasted because you will get married and have kids.”
Ruth’s paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants who arrived in Western Australia in 1900. Her grandmother died when Ruth was two years old but family members often told wonderful tales about the spirited and courageous woman. As those family members passed away Ruth realised that she was the only one in the family in possession of the stories. Alida, had been a strong, ‘gutsy’ lady, so Ruth set about writing Alida’s story, with a well-researched blend of social events, history and politics.
When “Alida’s Story” was completed Ruth then wrote her mother’s story and her own. The trilogy, “Hard Women” encompasses the life patterns of women over three generations, and produces an understanding of the times, particularly the difficult and unreasonable situations faced by women over the past century.
The homestay holiday business for international students that Ruth and her husband established in the town of Mount Beauty, Victoria, kept them busy for 27 years until it had to close in 2020 because of the Covid Pandemic. They then moved closer to family, in the SE of NSW. Ruth and Don had both been writing for several years and considering the impact of losing the business and their familiar surrounds they decided to concentrate on writing. When they settled in Bateman’s Bay, Ruth decided to write fiction and was introduced to the Eurobodalla Writer’s Group.
CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE
Ruth has just had her first book of fiction published. “Clouds and Sunshine”, is a story of two daredevils with dreams of the future. From the days of settlement during the early 1900s in the mid-western New South Wales farming region, to the 1980s, there is generational discord, inheritance arguments, and jealousy, all of which ultimately create dissension between the characters, while adventurous pursuits continue in the isolated, NSW, country town of Gunnedah.
