The Drover’s Daughter rides again

BY SAMANTHA ELLEY

When she was only three months old, Patsy Kemp’s parents went droving.

She was the ffth child in the family, and two more were born after her.

“We ended up with seven children and in those days when we frst went droving, we only had a small cart,” Patsy said.

“You can imagine seven kids with two or three workmen with horses and dogs and all the rest of it.”

It was these memories and many more that Patsy frst compiled in her book The Drover’s Daughter, which was published in 2017.

This has now been followed up with The Drovers Daughter Rides Again.

While Patsy’s frst book regales stories of life on the road while droving sheep in the ‘long paddock’ and growing up in interesting circum stances, her second book is a prequel.

“It starts before I was born, talking about how Mum started droving with Dad when she had fve children under six to look after,” Patsy said.

“A few of my readers (from the frst book) also said they were interested in what I did next.

“I have included my living in Melbourne, getting married, and divorced, travelling overseas and when I got back into Aussie to get a job, as a shearers’ cook, jackaroo cook and a farm hand.”

As a child, Patsy saw plenty of Australia.

“We went into Queensland up as far as Charleville, round Roma way, did a lot of work in Dirranbandi,” she said.

“The majority of the work was mostly around Moree and Bourke and all those places.

“We’ve been everywhere man.”

Patsy’s idea to write her books came about when she started telling droving stories to friends overseas.

“They all used to say, ‘you’ve got to write about this’ and so from that time on I started to collect my memories,” she said.

“Just on a piece of paper, I’d just end up with a whole shoebox full.”

Finally, the stories were compiled in her frst book.

When she started on her second book, Patsy worried she wouldn’t have the material.

“I had no reason to worry,” she said.

“The stories just kept coming.”

Patsy said it is the only story that has ever been written, not just by a female, but of a family droving together.

Both The Drover’s Daughter and The Drover’s Daughter Rides Again are available at patsykempdrover.com.