Blackie: A Story of the Old-time Bushmen

This is the story of Blackie (Andrew Black), a legendary bushman who worked and fought and drank and gambled his way from Tasmania to Victoria to Otago to the King Country to Northland, and to the Solomon Islands where his bones now lie buried.

It is also the story of his only love, Ettie, whose heart he nearly broke with his mania for grog and gambling. She married someone else, but . . .

These two are seen through the eyes of author Ted Ashby, who first met them in the little timber-mill town of Powelltown, Victoria, where he went to work as a young Aucklander in the 1920s. He worked with Blackie there and later in the Solomons before World War II, and then met up with him in the Solomons again after the war ended, in circumstances that rounded off their association in a strangely nostalgic way. Then he went back to Powelltown and broke the news to Ettie.

Blackie was an unforgettable character - a big man and, on occasion, a violent one; uneducated, but with a streak of philosophy that depened as he grew older and more mature; a man of immensely strong personality; a natural leader. His is a fascinating story of adventures, successes and failures in the tough world of timber-cutting and axemen's contests.

But the book is more than the biography of one hardcase Tassie. It vividly recreates the rough life of the bushmen in the forests and sawmill townships of rural Victoria, New Zealand and the tropics; the skills and strengths demanded by timber-falling and by chopping contests; and the stresses of war in the Solomons, where Blackie and his launch took part in the stealthy activities of Coast Watchers.

Ted Ashby, author of the popular Phanton Fleet, has written a gripping yarn, founded on fact.

- from the dust jacket.

Blackie: A Story of the Old-time Bushmen
Ted Ashby

A.H. & A.W. Reed Ltd.
Wellington
1978

1st edition.

Green cloth boards with titles in gold on the spine.
129 pages.
Good second-hand condition. Binding tight, pages clean.
Dust jacket faded on the spine and top edge. Top edge creased, small tear at the top of the spine, otherwise good.