Ruth Park Books In Order

Muddle-Headed Wombat Books In Order

The Muddle-Headed Wombat (1962)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat On Holiday (1964)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Treetops (1965)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat At School (1966)
The Muddle Headed Wombat In The Snow (1966)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat On a Rainy Day (1970)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Springtime (1970)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat On the River (1970)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat And The Invention (1975)
The Muddle-Headed Wombat On Clean-up Day (1976)
The Muddle- Headed Wombat Is Very Bad (1981)

Novels

Poor Man’s Orange (1949)
The Witch’s Thorn (1951)
A Power of Roses (1953)
The Frost and the Fire (1957)
The Hole in the Hill (1961)
Serpent’s Delight (1962)
Airlift for Grandee (1964)
The Sixpenny Island (1968)
Callie’s Castle (1974)
Merchant Campbell (1976)
Swords and Crowns and Rings (1977)
Come Danger, Come Darkness (1978)
The Harp in the South (1980)
The Big Brass Key (1984)
Missus (1985)
Playing Beatie Bow (1986)
My Sister Sif (1986)
Callie’s Family (1988)
Callie (2010)

Omnibus

Missus / Harp in the South / Poor Man’s Orange (1987)

Collections

Things in Corners (1989)

Picture Books

Nuki and the Sea Serpent (1969)
When the Wind Changed (1981)
James (1991)

Non fiction

The Companion Guide to Sydney (1973)
Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island (1982)
The Sydney We Love (1983)
A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992)
Fishing In The Styx (1993)

Muddle-Headed Wombat Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Omnibus Book Covers

Missus / Harp in the South / Poor Man’s Orange
(1987)

Collections Book Covers

Things in Corners
(1989)

Picture Books Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Ruth Park Books Overview

The Muddle- Headed Wombat Is Very Bad

Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd

Poor Man’s Orange

First published in 1949 as the sequel to the award winning ‘The Harp in the South’, this novel continues the story of the Darcy family of Sydney. The author also wrote ‘Swords and Crowns and Rings’, which won the Miles Franklin Award.

The Frost and the Fire

As washerwomen to the goldfields, Mother Jerusalem and Currency go where the men search for gold. As miners flock to feverishly pursue the new discoveries at Otago, they follow, with their washing machine and the promise of a partnership. Life on the goldfields in the 1860s is hard and the people have to be tough to survive. As the settlement grows many thousands crowd the hills and river banks looking for gold. Crowding the pages of this masterly adventure novel are a host of these rugged characters loving, hating, giving birth wonderfully brought to life by Ruth Park.

Swords and Crowns and Rings

She was the banker’s daughter, a highborn, golden beauty. He was a grocer’s son, strong and proud, but fate had masked his strength and pride with a form that set him forever apart from other men. Compelling need drew them together, A bewitching fantasy encircled and sustained them. Then the Great Depression swept across Australia to impoverish the rich, humble the proud, and turn the poor into a stunned army of desperate vagrants and homeless vagabonds. Expelled from their enchated realm, brutally seperated, they each clutched a secret, a promise a dream of finding each other in a harsh world where only a perfect love like theirs could survive, overcome and triumph.

The Harp in the South

Covering a span of over thirty years in the life of the Darcy family, these three iconic novels from Ruth Park take us from first love to hardship via outback Australia and the streets of Surry Hills. In ‘Missus’, we read about the adolescence and courtship of Hughie Darcy and the innocent Margaret in the dirt and dust of rural Australia. We next meet the pair in ‘The Harp in the South‘, where they run a flea bitten boarding house in Surry Hills with their two daughters, Roie and Dolour. Making ends meet is hard in the slums of Sydney, and love is not kind to Roie as she takes her first steps into adulthood. Lastly we watch Dolour grow up all too fast in ‘Poor Man’s Orange’, as Hughie and Margaret struggle to keep their relationship alive after so many years together. At times confronting, often affectionate, this is a remarkable portrait of an Australian working class family of the time.

Playing Beatie Bow

Abigail Kirk finds herself transported back to the late nineteenth century and becomes embroiled in the family life of the Bows. The Bows will not let her return home believing that she is ‘the stranger’ who will preserve the family gift.

When the Wind Changed

Josh could make the most awful faces. But one day, just as he made the most hideous face of all, the wind changed. However, Josh’s awful face helps save his dad from a bank robber just before the wind changes again.