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'Winton' begins with the story of Bill and Beat Swann who met and married in Hillston NSW in 1926. The story of their farming life through two wars, the depression and their later years is told through the eyes of their eldest and youngest sons, two of their fourteen children.
The book then traces the stories of the fifteen people who arrived in Australia in the mid-nineteenth Century, and their families. They arrived in five different states and included agricultural labourers, sailors, domestic servants, miners, a convict and a copywriter. Courageous, hard workers, they headed for the bush and new towns and farms, eventually all coming together in the Riverina area in the early 1900s.
Part 2 goes further back into the heritage of the Swann family and traces the story of the many historical characters who are part of the Swann ancestry. Beginning with the Kings of Wessex and the Vikings, the Swann history includes kings, queens, knights, saints and many nobles. Many of these ancestors fought each other in bloodthirsty battles for power, established new colonies such as New York, fought in the crusades and were present at great moments of history.
About the author
Born in the 1950s, Jenny Kroonstuiver spent her childhood living on pastoral stations firstly in Western Queensland and then on the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia. She trained as a teacher and spent several years teaching in country areas of the Northern Territory and Queensland before returning to Kalgoorlie in the 1980s. After a short-lived marriage, she raised her four children alone, continuing to work in the broader education sector. From 2004 she took up a role managing the national training system for the Australian meat industry, a role she held until her retirement in 2020. After publishing several family histories and biographies, this is her fourth novel set in the ghost towns of Australia.
