"run quickly and go with your father. see if you can make him laugh."" so I would set out, and begin to play the child I no longer was." PG. 155 The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

Word Count:277

    Jill Ker Conway does a fantastic job of demonstrating the reality of life in the working class in Australia. Her family used it in order to feed their family and have money for the family to survive. Throughout the text, Jill Ker Conway talks about how the dry season was impacting her family and how she could see her family's anxieties start to come out, due to their concern for their life, and their family. Although her family began to have troubles due to the dry season, in which they lost farms and families money, the ability to live and feed their families/cattle. While also the lack of rain would also lead to bushfires that could destroy the families' whole way of life.

    I used the quote to demonstrate how Jil Ker Conway felt as a child seeing her family go through this intense and difficult time. No matter what seeing your parents from a young age brings the realization that something is going on and you have to become aware. Jil Ker Conway saw this and took on a role to become whatever her parents needed her to be. Whether she helped her mom at home or her mom asked her to help her father to make him laugh. She had to put aside her childhood in order to take on what her parents need her to do. Her schoolwork even became a gift or something that she could do for fun. All of this demonstrates that even from a young age women always a big role in the family taking on whatever roles were needed from them.