Some Horses Have Purple Legs

This book is a memoir. It records the author's childhood recollections of the world around him, a predominantly Irish Catholic world located on the Darling Downs in Queensland. The story begins during the Second World War in 1942 and evolves over 14 years until 1956, tracing the most dramatic advance in control of infectious diseases ever seen in the history of medecine and witnessing the beginning resolution of society's sectarianism. This post-war changing society rollicks along hand-in-hand with the boyhood experiences of the author, his family and his schoolmates, with all its mixture of humour, larrikinism and family life that comes, for better or worse, with an Australian Irish-Catholic childhood.