My Australian Story: Escape from Cockatoo Island

It is 1879 and life in the Biloela Industrial School is tough for eleven-year-old orphan, Olivia Markham.

Her windswept days are filled with sewing, washing, aimless roaming, avoiding the girls from the Reformatory School, and hoping to be apprenticed by the colony. Sydney is rapidly growing and modernising, but Olivia can only imagine what life is like beyond the shores of Cockatoo Island. She dreams of freedom, friendship and, above all, family. Can she ever escape?

Yvette Poshoglian
Published January 2021
Paperback
208 Pages
198mm x 130mm
ISBN: 9781760971274