A child who grew up during the Depression in Australia does not remember the unemployment statistics or the details of government welfare programmes. They remember going to the fruit shop and asking for 'specks' or spoiled fruit that was given away for nothing; they remember hiding their shoes in a culvert on the way to school because the poor kids beat up the 'richer' kids who had them. This is an absorbing collection of reminiscences of people who grew up in Australia between 1900 and 1970, giving the reader a whole new perspective on events and making those events more than just a flat sentence in a history book. This is the closest a reader will get to experiencing the hard times of the different generations of those decades.