my country childhood
ONE OF JULIE BISHOP’S favourite books as a child was South Australian author Colin Thiele’s February Dragon. Thiele is famous for his novel Storm Boy, but it was this lesser-known work that struck a chord with our former foreign minister when she was a little girl.
“It was about a bush fire and it made me cry, because it reminded me of the stories that my father would tell about our property when the place burnt down,” says Julie, referring to the Black Sunday fires that destroyed her family’s Adelaide Hills farm.
Isabel Bishop — Julie’s resourceful mother who went on to become the mayor of East Torrens District Council — was at home alone with her oldest daughters, Mary Lou and Patricia, on January 2, 1955, when the fires hit. Her husband
