In reminiscences and family matters handed down, few are written and fewer published, and they are distorted by ignorance and surmise. The reprints of Miles Franklin’s Childhood in Brindabella cannot convey the experience of the three months that it took in the 1840s for a family to move from near the Raby of Thomas Mitchell south of the Campbelltown road junction with the Hume Highway to that place in the deep bush. Now it is a few hours’ drive. The day-to-day reality of the old treks is beyond our experience or understanding. The cover of the reprints of her memoirs…