Lucy here describes her home in County Galway, which she fled aged 8 in 1921, and how it compares to the house which her da found for them in Sydney’s Newtown.
‘It was a little four room cottage with a thatched roof and a hearth. A kitchen there was in one room and a parlour and Daid’s studio in another, and I slept in a bed in an alcove in my parents’ room. I didn’t even know what a bathroom was until I came out here. Can you credit that?’ I laughed. ‘And we had candles. Nothing fancy like electricity, let me tell you now. I couldn’t believe my eyes when Daid flicked a switch for to make the light go on. And when I was finally able to get up and do it myself, I couldn’t stop turning the lights on and off.’
A Distant Prospect is available in Paperback (494 pp), Large Print Hardcover (610 pp), Kindle and Kobo editions!