Riverton was the name of the farm purchased by my grandfather in the 1920s and farmed by my father when I was growing up. That is, it is my childhood place called home. It was on the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales between Wagga Wagga and Narrandera. There were river flats and sandhills, orchards, sheep, a few cows, horses, dogs, chooks, cats and possums, the river provided fish and yabbies. You’ll learn something about Riverton from my mother’s poems in Me in the Middle, and in the Bedrock section of sprinting on quicksand.
It was too the place where I developed a reading habit and a love for music. I used to sneak off from daily chores with a book and sit on a log under the shade of the gum trees. The kookaburras would laugh at me as I scratched mosquito bites, the neighbour’s heavy red Hereford cattle would stare, sometimes the grey cat joined me. I read the Australian childhood classics of the time – Ethel Turner, Henry Handel Richardson, the bush poets, as well as Enid Blyton, of course!
When I decided to publish Me in the Middle, I found I had to register as a publisher. The name Riverton came to me quick as a flash, I was thinking of Riverton Publications but my friend Eileen suggested Press, and I was immediately convinced, Riverton Press it is!