The Dusty Road From Perth .....

[Laura]

This excerpt is from a wonderful book which is well worth reading.

The Dusty Road From Perth
James Morton, 1922 -
ISBN 0-88894-321-0
Copyright 1981 by James Morton

-prologue-

My father was not a warrior, a politician or a mogul of the business world. In is day he was well known by his professional colleagues, marginally by the public and superficially by his children. No streets, buildings or parks were named after him. Yet glancing back at him from a greatly changed social world, through the filter of two decades, he was a remarkable man. He was accepted merely as a father in the world of the present by his children, who knew little of his recent past and nothing of his more distant origins - and did not particularly care. He lived in a tight little community dominated by Scots, all of whom were deeply attached to their homeland, though few would live to see it again. His origins, five thousand miles away, were inaccessible to him for most of his life, yet a changing world allowed his children and his grandchildren not only to see them but also to experience them. One’s roots are there for anyone who is sufficiently curious to see and to experience, whether his name is the same as my father’s or not. He was not squeezed from a tube into Burnaby in 1912, like a figure on a wedding cake. Do you wish to be no more than a dog - who is friendly, faithful and intelligent but who does not care who his mother and father were? Do you ever wonder why you were one of those select few who were spared? Do you realize that your direct ancestors survived the Black Plague and the lances and arrows of one side or the other - indeed all the plagues and wars that have beset mankind since the beginning of time? My father’s ancestors survived and, through centuries of alliances, produced a man who was different from anyone the world had ever known. And the product was a good one.

[CatrionaL]

A book to read