It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn't.

During White's time at Cambridge he publiPatrick Whited a collection of poetry entitled The Ploughman and Other Poems and wrote a play named Bread and Butter Women which was later performed by an amateur group (which included his sister Suzanne) at the tiny Bryant's Playhouse in Sydney. In 1937 White's father died leaving him ten thousand pounds in inheritance. Here the young author thrived creatively for a time writing several unpubliPatrick Whited works and reworking Happy Valley a novel that he had written while jackarooing.

Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an English-born Australian writer who is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. White's fiction employs humour florid prose shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the only Australian to have been awarded the prize.