To Be Heirs Forever

To Be Heirs Forever is a fascinating and lively account of early Australia from the author of the bestselling Kings in Grass Castles. In 1829 Eliza Shaw exchanged her world of English drawing-rooms and embroidery for the brushwood huts and backbreaking labour of a pioneer settlement in Western Australia. She left Leicestershire with her husband Will, six children, two servants, some livestock and tools. They were never to see England again ... After long months at sea, then a disastrous arrival at the infant settlement of Fremantle when two of their sons were drowned, the family finally settled on the upper Swan River about 90 miles from Perth. The heat and sand, the hardships and calamities, the brilliant flowers and birds, the strangeness of the Aborigines, and the courage and comradeship of the small band of settlers are all recorded here through the eyes of a remarkable woman. Eliza Shaw died in 1877, so her story encompasses almost the entire first half-century of the settlement of Perth and its surrounds. She left an invaluable legacy of letters and journals. Mary Durack first wrote the story of Eliza Shaw as a monologue for the 1972 Perth Festival where it played to packed audiences. It has since toured throughout Australia. To Be Heirs Forever will appeal to lovers of Australiana, family sagas, stories of pioneering women and pioneering life (such as The Letters of Rachel Henning) and Mary Durack's writing. The late Mary Durack was one of the great chroniclers of the West and Australia's past. Her best-known book - about her pioneering family - is Kings In Grass Castles. Both it and Sons In The Saddle have proved to be excellent backlist titles - particularly since their reformatting into smart Bs.