At Woomeroo

Woomeroo – a land where mirrors wink in the sunlight as people signal one another from the hilltops … where a squirming pink infant, babbling with excitement, arrives by mail … where a man turns his kite over to his small son, who is borne off by it over the hill … where a rooster promises a little boy that he's going to kill him … where you can find a boutique near Tiffany's that deals in designer children … where a king struggles to evade an inescapable curse … where, with the addition of a girl's packing crate, a boy's refrigerator carton becomes a commodious two-room hovel … a digger finds all sorts of things in the ground, including an attractive young woman … where everyone begins to feel much better when it gets to be time for visits and the children from the workhouse come, weeping in their rags and sooty shoes … where a girl standing in the boundless sea shakes her head and asks with perfect innocence: "What is land?"

Once he finally produced Ishmael, Daniel found he had other books to write – Providence, The Story of B, Beyond Civilization, and so on. And, sadly, he had no more time to spend at Woomeroo. But now at least he has collected these undiscovered stories in a volume called – what else? – At Woomeroo.

Click here to read more. Click on "Look Inside" to read the title story, followed by Michael Schillace's interesting introduction on the back page.