World Geography and Literature 2015-2016: Australia Novels

I've started pre-reading Erik's readers for next year and am really enjoying the books still on my list of possibilities. Thanks to Kendra of Aussie Pumpkin Patch, I've found a couple of Australia based novels: A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French and The Castaway Convict by Wendy Macdonald. I'm also hoping for him to watch the movie Storm Boy based on the book by Colin Thiele.

In A Waltz for Matilda, After her mother dies, Matilda saves up enough money for a ticket to a railway station near where her father is supposed to have a farm. She hasn't seen him for years, but up until last year he always sent money to help support her and her mother. She finds him and they have a day together before he dies trying to elude troopers who are trying to arrest him for a crime he hasn't committed. She is a gutsy, courageous, young girl who is determined to remain on the land her father loved and make a go of his farm. Against all odds and with the help of "Auntie Love" a local aborigine and a former stockman on the large neighboring spread, she builds up a quality flock of sheep. The story also tells how Australia came to become a united nation. 

The Castaway Convict is set in Tasmania. The main character, Josh, finds himself in a boys prison, Point Puer, unable to remember the crime he committed and with a name, "Tom Parrish", that is not his own. Bullying by another prisoner while on a work outing leads to Josh being pushed over a cliff and being swept across a bay to land on the other side and possibly a chance at freedom. He's found my a carpenter, who persuades his former captain to give him a chance, and begins work. When he is sent to collect mail, he overhears a voice (and a man) he recognizes asking for his father's mail. He starts to remember being in a small room with a desperately ill man. Later he's in the mail office when a letter comes in addressed to "Master Josh Parrish", desperate to get this letter from the imposter, he attempts to pick it out of his pocket. He's caught and arrested in front of the Captain's family. Before he is taken away he states the letter would have been from his Grandma Lavinia and identifies where she lived. His ally within the household, Sarah (the Captain's daughter), slips the letter out of the imposter's pocket and finds that it was indeed from the lady Josh predicted was the writer. Justice is served in the end and Josh finds himself having a new family and a hopeful future.