A Fortunate Life, by A.B.Facey.

I have just finished reading an interesting book called A Fortunate Life. This book is an autobiography written by Albert B Facey. A.B.Facey is a man who lived in Western Australia at the beginning of the last century. He was born in 1894 and sadly died in 1982, 9 months after this book was published.

He was born in Victoria and when he was two years old, his father died of typhoid fever. Then his mother left him and his sisters with their grandparents while she went to look after the two older kids. The grandparents then moved over to Western Australia taking all the kids with them and lived in the bush on land they were going to make into a farm. His first job was meant to be looking after an old lady in the neighbour’s property but he was treated very badly including being horsewhipped until he passed out. He was only eight years old when that happened. Those wounds took more than one week to recover. After that, he made shoes and ran away into the bush and made his way home. He did various other jobs including working on a farm, cattle droving, boxing, building railways and repairing wells. In 1924, when he was 20, he volunteered for the First World War.

On the 25th of April 1915, the Eleventh battalion (the one that Albert was in) landed on the beach of Gallipolli to face fierce Turkish shelling and shrapnel fire. A lot of Australians died on that horrible day. Every year, on the 25th of April, Australians and New Zealanders remember the day that they landed on that beach in Gallipolli. It is called ANZAC day. He got wounded twice, the second time so badly that he was excused from the war because he was hurt. After he had recovered, he heard the sad news that both his brothers had been killed in action.

Once he left the war, his war injuries stopped him from doing any hard work. He got married and got a job as a tram driver. He saved up and bought his first farm. This was quite successful until the depression in 1933 when he was forced to leave the farm or face starvation. After the depression he worked many more jobs including getting a few more farms before he retired and wrote this book 9 months before he passed away.

This is the first autobiography I have read and I enjoyed it. I liked it because in some bits it is very dramatic and in other bits it is really calm. From this book, I learnt that the dingo -infested outback in Australia is very wild and it is very easy to get lost. I like this book because it reminds me how different life was 100 years ago for people my age. I think that other people my age should read this book because it is interesting and it reminds the reader how lucky they are.