The last chapter of Poor Man's Orange by Ruth Park (1949) had me collapse in tears. The element of the much loved daughter/sister/wife/mother lost in childbirth coming through in psychic syncronicity; the descriptions of the marsh in the old days before the tarmac shops and slums as the breeding ground of swans and the loquats full of pink cockatoos; the mention of three weeds growing up as soon as one of the slums came down, and a quote about the sole of a koorie which so explained their loneliness in a white man's whirlpool. It came after an insolent-like fury that it was based in surry hills and not glebe wanted it finished then and there, an almost resentment for having to read endless images of bed-bugs, constantly broken and drunk men, and women in silent despair. Yet those descriptions won out; they were what i read it for, and were enough to feed my curiousity about the past. It's even a movie.