A. B. FaceyReseñas

This is the autobiography of A B (Bert) Facey, born in 1894, who spent most of his life in Western Australia.

Of the 326 pages, the first 239pages deal with his first 20 years or so, until he trained for and then fought at Gallipoli in WW1 (covered in 39 pages) before covering the next 58 or so years until 1976 (only a few years before he wrote and published in 1980. His early years were critical to the development of the person he became, and as such the book is not unbalanced for that reason alone.

Borne in Victoria, Bert's father travelled with his 2 oldest brothers to WA, chasing gold. His father died soon thereafter and, notwithstanding that, most but not all of Bert's family followed. Bert's mother stayed in Perth, later remarried and had further children. Bert left Perth to live on an Uncle's wheat farm, together with his beloved grandmother. But when Bert was 8 or 9 (that is not a typo), with the struggle in supporting Bert, he went to work for a stranger who promised 5 shillings a week, board, clothes and boots in exchange for light work, looking after / being a companion to Bob's ailing and eyesight failing mother but more importantly, that Bert could return to his Uncle's farm if Bert was not satisfied with the job.

It did not turn out that way: Bert was expected to work from daylight to sunset, looking after the dairy, and everything else. He was never paid; did not receive the clothes of boots promised, meaning he worked through winter with footwear.

This went on for years, and when he raised the topic of returning to his uncle's farm, he was told he would never be allowed to do so. He sought help from various people who visited Bob's farm over the years, including police who were looking for stolen horses and cattle believing that Bob and his brothers were responsible, and yet nothing happened. Bert was also surprised that he never heard from his grandmother, even at the time of his birthdays (it later transpired that Bob never handed on teh Grandmother's letters to Bert).

At one stage Bert was whipped by Bob, so seriously it was thought that Bert would die. He eventually ran away, making it back to his uncle's farm, but was not to stay there long, as things were still grim economically.

What followed was a number of years of working for strangers in developing new wheat farms. Often the only workers were the farm owner (or a hired manager on behalf of the owner) and Bert. They did everything: built temporary and permanent houses and other buildings; cleared the land (often hundreds and hundreds of hectares), which involved cutting timber and then either burning it (often on top of the stumps, so as to burn the stumps down to ground level, or alternatively fashioned for fence posts or use in constructing buildings; fencing paddocks; constructing dams all before planting, tending to, harvesting and transporting the crops. And all the time they were faced with the fickle weather and often faced run when crops failed.

Many of these people were decent, hard working people, but it was a hard life. When Bert was about 16, having worked with a farm manager from the beginning of establishing a new farm, and at one stage taking sole responsibility for looking after the farm which the manager took 5 months leave (to get married) and having been told by the manager that the owners would be delighted with the magnificent job Bert had done during all those times, Bert was not allowed to sit in the same room as the manager and the owners when they visited the farm soon after, and was made to eat alone in the kitchen. He was not seen as being of the same class.

And worse was to come when the manager's brother arrived at the farm, with no farm or other relevant skills and Bert was told there was no room for him and he had to move on.

Apart from farm work, Bert also took on other hard labour jobs, often travelling long distances in his mid teens to seek them out.

Immediately before joining the army at the beginning of WW1, Bert worked in a travelling troupe of boxers.

Bert liked many of his generation willingly signed up to do their bit in WW1. But never did Bert hide the fact that much of war scared him a lot. His training was minimal. And after a short stint in Egypt, he became one of the earlier waves to hit Gallipoli. It sounded insane; there was little that we have not heard or read of before, but it is portrayed from a very personal way. The futility of war came through very much: Bert lost 2 brothers at Gallipoli

And the attitudes f some of the more senior people were appalling: on one occasion there had been a ferocious battle resulting in many people lying dead in no mans land between the Turks and the Australians. Being very hot, the bodies soon began to rot and the smell was terrible. Not for that reason alone but also in order to provide a decent burial, the soldiers attempted to retrieve the bodies, but the Turks would simply mow down anyone who attempted to enter no mans land for that purpose. A visiting high ranking British officer asked why the bodies were not being retrieved and buried. The senior Australian officers explained the situation, only to be met with the British officer replying "What is a few men?" implying that more death was better than the alternative.

Bert was injured and invalided out, returning to Australia. But before he does, there is a terrific piece where Bert is on a vessel on the Mediterranean, being hunted down by a German submarine, which the vessel survives.

The balance of the book covers Bert's rehabilitation in Perth, his marriage and his battle to support his family, notwithstanding his war injuries, his absence of any formal education, the depression which hit Australia in the post war years etc.

From all accounts, he fared well, with drive, cunning and guile. He was a very well respected, self educated person.

It is a terrific read. It paints a picture of an Australia that is not all that long ago and yet it seems like a foreign country.

I heartedly recommend it to anyone wanting to understand early 1900s Australia and the frontier it then (still) was.

Big Ship

3 May 2022½

Really 3.5 stars. A biography of an Australian pioneer, whose positive attitude and strong work ethic helped him overcome life's many challenges, again and again, starting with losing his parents as a very young age. Note: I read an illustrated version with various photos, and historical Aussie advertisements. (Recommended by Yvonne, my Goodreads pal.)

Exceptional.½

Why did no-one ever shove this book in my face and tell me how brilliant it is???! Do yourself a favour and read it now! It will get you right from the start. An absolutely fascinating account of life in pioneer Australia from being a boy on the gold fields, a teen working for his keep to a young man enduring the horrors of WWI at Gallipoli and then to marriage and getting by during the depression of the 30's. This book will take you a journey through the hard but ultimately fortunate life of a man who will show you that with the best attitude your life is in your control.
So many times in his life things could have turned out differently or Mr Facey could have given up but this is just a wonderful life and told in a clear, unique and modest voice.

This book captivated me.

This is the autobiography of Western Australian Albert Facey. It is embellished throughout with maps, photos and illlustrations, all of which are fun or relevant in some way. It looks like a doorstop but reading went surprisingly fast, not only because it is so interesting but Facey is a captivating storyteller.

Born in 1894 he was brought up by his grandmother and out of necessity started work at aged eight. One of the most dramatic chapters describes the time he spend on a cattle drive. The events following a stampede caused Facey to become lost in the outback for days, an event that was almost fatal. Fortunately, he was rescued and cared for by Aboriginals.

He survived the atrocity of Gallipoli after suffering wounds that he speaks of matter of factly although they affected him all his life. It was only when I reached this section that I realized the details were familiar, and previously seen on a television production. In fact his life story inspired a television series and at least one book.

In the post-war years he was re-established in Western Australia only to lose everything in the Depression. Facey's life was as tough as a life can be, yet there is not one word of self-pity or complaint. He taught himself to read and write. This book, written in a down-to-earth style is all the more moving because of the plain, simple language. As an example, in only a few sentences he was able to create a vivid picture of the horror of a bayonet charge and of hand-to-hand fighting. It must have been particularly horrifying for this amiable guy who held no grudges against anyone.

A Fortunate Life was published when Albert Facey was 87 years old just months before he died. I have to wonder if he took the title from his unique bit of good fortune when he discovered the woman who would become his wife, Evelyn Mary Gibson, through a parcel of socks received in Gallipoli. This national celebrity is, in my opinion, an outstanding person and hero. Thanks to polaris for recommending this excellent book.

The cover blurb promised "A true classic of Australian literature..." - which is thankfully not undeserved hyperbole at all. The author lived a life with many hardships - especially his poverty stricken remote rural childhood - but writes toward the end of his fascinating life with the perspective of one who is not remotely bitter, but full of wisdom, and grace.

Born in the 1890s, Facey's orphan childhood coincided with a period of expansive white settlement in the southwest of Western Australia. The area that much of his story takes place in would become the famous wheat belt of that part of Australia. Living at first with his beloved Grandma and an Uncle who took him and his many siblings in, his life was tough and the work was unrelenting from about the time he was big enough to hold a horse.

After being sent away to work and then suffering at the hands of cruel and exploitative owner-employers, young Bertie eventually emerges from his Outback apprenticeship as a modest and hard working young man with a great love of, and skill with, animals and nature. What he lacked in formal education he more than made up for with his knowledge of the land and the rhythm of the seasons and the way to build up a homestead out of almost nothing (which he ends up having to achieve on several occasions for a variety of reasons).

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

It's hard to single out specific episodes or chapters that I liked best, but there is a longer than average section on his experiences working on a cattle drive for the first time - aged about 15 - that particularly stood out for me. The drive lasts for months and journeys deep, deep into the desert bush before circling around in a wide arc back to the west coast cattle market at Geraldton. The drama and the excitement and the pure graft involved, as well as the stunning and stark beauty of the Western Australian deserts really come across most vividly. During the drive, there is a heavy storm which causes a stampede. In the confusion Bert is separated from the others and after a day or two of sheltering from the terrible weather, eventually becomes completely lost. With almost no food and little else, he becomes increasingly weaker and confused. An elderly aboriginal Australian picks up his trail and ultimately saves Bertie's life. It is evident from the way his tale is told that Facey never had any truck with racial prejudices, or any kind of injustice for that matter.

*MORE SPOILERS...*

As the 20th century progresses Facey's young adulthood and coming of age inevitably culminate in the tragedy of the First World War. Leaving Perth with tens of thousands of his adventure-seeking compratiots, he is sent into the bloodbath of Gallipoli. Bert survived 4 months in the hellhole of the doomed Turkish beachhead. Two of his brothers, as well of course as many thousands of other brave ANZAC troops, sadly would not. He even survives being blown up, although his war wounds will blight him for the rest of his life in one way or another.

Returning home after the war, Bert can finally get on with his life and starts a family with his beloved wife in peace. Not without the further troubles that life has to throw at an uneducated war veteran, he manages to make his way in an ever-changing modern Australia as his family grows and his children eventually leave the home to have families of their own.

Despite the many hardships the author has to endure, A Fortunate Life was a wonderful book to read, and one that I really enjoyed. It is a great read for all ages and the ages. A. B. Facey's story really is a story of Australia and that great country's tough earlier pioneering generations. The humility that the author writes with is truly inspiring and this is indeed a genuine classic.½

I am a sucker for a well-told memoir, and I particularly love those by people I've never heard of. Well, I'd never heard of A.B. (Albert Barnett) Facey, but that's mostly because I don't live in Australia. Because in the past thirty-some years his memoir, A FORTUNATE LIFE, has taken on the status of a classic in that country. And here's another thing that intrigued me: having never gone to school, Facey was functionally illiterate until he was nearly twenty years old, and was over eighty when he began writing down his life story. I love it when old guys write their life stories, maybe because I was sixty when I wrote my first memoir.

Albert Facey's story of his life in frontier Western Australia was a fascinating, even mesmerizing one. Born into a large family in 1894, Facey's father died when he was only a few years old and his mother married again and left him (and other siblings) to be raised by his grandmother and an aunt and uncle. At eight he was literally "farmed out" to another family who abused and neglected him. Forced to do difficult farm labor and living in filth and rags, Facey learned early to be self-sufficient and to work his scrawny little butt off to survive. The family he'd been indentured to turned out to be one of criminals, cattle thieves and drunks. When he managed to escape that situation, Albert's subsequent jobs with other, kinder families, got gradually better, and by the time he was fourteen he was knowledgeable and tough enough to manage a farm by himself. He learned about wheat farming and working with all manner of stock - sheep, pigs, horses, poultry. As a teenager he was cook's helper driving over two thousand head of cattle for hundreds of miles to a railhead for sale. Along the way he became lost in the wilderness for a week following a stampede and would have starved had he not been found and rescued by friendly Aborigines. He drove spikes for a new railroad line for a time. He was also a professional pugilist with a traveling troupe of boxers, possessing a perfect left jab, and he never lost a fight.

In 1914 he volunteered for the army and was badly wounded at the infamous battle of Gallipoli, and was invalided out of the service with a disability pension. Shortly thereafter he married his wife, Evelyn - a marriage that produced several children and lasted fifty-nine years, until his wife's death in 1976. During that time Facey worked numerous jobs despite his war injuries, which often periodically landed him back in hospital, and endured the hardships of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Three of his sons enlisted in the army for service in WWII, and one of them was killed.

And hey, I'm not really giving anything away here. I'm only skimming the surface of Facey's life in the briefest kind of outline. Facey tells his story in the most straightforward manner, filled with fascinating details and anecdotes, with no trace of self-pity anywhere. And he is the most natural of storytellers, obviously a child of the oral tradition. What you are reading in A FORTUNATE LIFE is history - history of the most personal and valuable sort. Because, for his time, Albert Facey was a kind of Everyman. And the reading world is very fortunate indeed that Albert Facey took the time, with the encouragement of his devoted wife, to set it all down for us. A.B. Facey died in 1982, nine months after his book was published. He was 87 years old.

This is simply one helluva good read. VERY highly recommended.

5129. A Fortunate Life, by A. B. Facey (read 5 Mar 2014) This is a stunningly powerful autobiography by a man who was born in 1894 in Australia, whose father died when he was two and whose mother had very little to do with him. He worked very hard as a child and received no schooling, being unable to read or write till he was a teenager. In 1914 he enlisted and was sent to Gallipoli, where he had a fearsome time and eventually was seriously wounded. After the war he married a woman who had sent him socks at Gallipoli, having encountered her in a chance meeting on a street in Australia. They had a bad time often but had eight children and went through rough times--among other evils, their house burned down and their Depression years were filled with adversity. Yet he calls his life a fortunate one and he was exceptionally able to deal with the many adversities he lived through. The book is very simply written but in its starkness I found it absorbing reading. One can understand why it is deemed a classic Australian epic.

Albert Facey was born in Victoria (Australia) in 1894. His two older brothers went to the gold fields with their father to find work, but died before Albert had turned 2. His mother followed to care for the two sons leaving Albert and his two other brothers and two sisters in the care of their grandmother. She never returned. Times were tough and Albert's grandmother sold her small acreage and moved them to Western Australia to live with their Uncle and his family on their settlement. They lived in utter proverty. When Albert was 8 he was sent to a neighbouring farm as a live-in farm hand and thus commence his life of fending for himself. Over the next 10 years he worked clearing land for cultivation, tending farm animals, droving, laying railways. He had no education. He fought in Gallipoli.
When Bert was 82 he wrote his story. He says that when he was very young he was a bit lonely, but his story is told as if he he talking to you. He does not complain about what he did not have but was thankful for all the kindness that were shown to him throughout his life. He describes the early settlers life of poverty and the stuggle of life on the land with a detail not often shown in books on wealthy settlers, and he describes a way of life, an particularly and attitude towards children which would be unthinkable today. Bert met and married his beloved wife of almost 60 years after he returned from Gallipoli. Life was never easy for them but Bert was thankful that he had a "Fortunate Life"½

Our group had an interesting discussion on the life and times of A.B. Facey this month. We were generally agreed that he was a special man who took what life handed him and did the best he could with it. Things were not easy back then and we all acknowledged that the general mentality of taking responsibility for oneself was common, but Facey had a remarkable ability to ride through the hard times with a positive attitude. Whether this was an individual trait he was born with or a result of early childhood experiences, we were not able to discern.

In any case, we were all impressed with his writing skills, considering his late education, and believe he did a more than admiral job of recording his memories. This all led to a great discussion on the huge differences to today’s generation of young people … those who have seen little or no tough times and how they perceive their world and their place in it, role models, class conscience and in ‘the less you have, the better you are’ theory. All very interesting and stimulating!

The publish date of A Fortunate Life was a surprise to most of us, believing it to be around the ‘60s or ‘70s when in fact it was not published until 1982, just a year before Facey’s death. This made his memory and ability to recall so much of his life even more remarkable in our eyes, and places it firmly in the list of must reads … for all generations.

This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet he felt that his life was fortunate. Facey's life story was published when he was eighty-seven.

I don't regard his life as fortunate but it was a wonderful book about times gone by in Australia.

Finally I've read this West Australian classic. I've recently been discussing with friends how easy it is to fall into the trap of assuming that mores and attitudes in the past are the same as in the present. This isn't the case, and although we can only view the past from our point of view, it's valuable to try to see it through the eyes of someone who was there. And boy, was A B Facey there! Worked (today we would say exploited) as a boy on the new settler's farms in the wheatbelt, cook's assistant in a cattle drive in the Murchison, on the front line at Gallipoli, returning permanently disabled, yet he still remained able to call himself fortunate. If you've not read this you need to!½

This book has been on my "must read" list for a long time, if only for the fact that everyone around me has read it, never mind its canonical status in Australian literature.
A Fortunate Life is an epic yarn of one man's life, simply told, from the horrors of his mistreatment as a child farm worker to the even greater horrors of his experiences at Gallipoli in World War One. Yet the horrors are leavened with stories of humour and great achievement in farming the unforgiving country of rural Western Australia, raising a big family during the Depression and teaching himself to read and write.
The standout chapters for me were the author's recollections of his six months on a cattle drive through central Western Australia in 1909. when he was not yet 15 years old. This included a harrowing week lost and alone in the bush, surviving on grass and scavenged kangaroo meat, culminating in an encounter with Aboriginal Australians that not only saved his life but altered his perceptions.
Facey genuinely feels "thrilled" looking back on his life, despite the terrible hardships endured, because he relished a challenge and never faltered in his belief at "having a go at something", always "ready to take a risk and try something new. If it worked out, well good, if not I would just try something else."
A few chapters into this book and I was shaking my head, asking myself "How much more can this bloke stand?" I was amazed at his resilience, not just in surviving but in creating such a full and fulfilling life.
Highly recommended. A must read, that's if you haven't read it already.

We read this story aloud as a family. It's a very simply told tale of a man's life in Western Australia from around the early 1900s or thereabouts. It's not a work of literary genius, but it's a fabulous portrayal of a life in those times.½

A Fortunate Life is a first hand account of events that most of us have only read about in history books. Albert Facey has lived the kind of life that would have broken a lesser man. From the time he lost his father to Typhoid on the goldfields, through his time as an illiterate child working for horse thieves, the Depression and both World Wars, Albert has had more than his fair share of tragedy. Yet all through this book he downplays his negative experiences, focusing on the positive and relaying his life in a fresh, humorous style that is both pleasant to read and hard to put down.. This is a uniquely Australian piece of literature and I found myself disappointed when I came to the end. A Fortunate Life is a must-read for all Australians.

I first read this at school. Growing up on a farm it made me realise how lucky we were. It made me cry. It has remained one of my favourites and sits on my book shelf.½

I found the writing very easy to follow. It opened my eyes to the harshness of the early pioneers in Australia.

This book should be read by every teenager in Australia. They would then know what hard work really is.

This book is truly inspiring. The story line is amazing with great descriptions of Western Australia. What a life. Made me cry.½

Non fiction