On Our Selection

The original edition of the book was illustrated by the Australian artists A. J. Fischer, Albert Henry Fullwood, G. W. Lambert, Fred Leist, Frank P. Mahony and Alf Vincent.

Encouraged by J. F. Archibald, the editor and publisher of The Bulletin, Davis continued writing the series of sketches.

Men in the front rank of Australian artists, like Vincent, Fischer, Lambert, Mahoney, Fullwood, and Leist, have lent their beat energies to catching the author's method, his moods and his types.

Usually illustration hinder rather than help the text, but in this case the reverse is the order, and it is doubtful whether anybody could fully understand the personality of Dad, Mother, and the others without Vincent's delightful pen-and-ink sketches.

"[3] A reviewer in The Western Mail (Perth) called the collection "really admirable" and went on "As the title implies, the story—or rather the series of sketches—deals with the duties of a family on a New South Wales selection.

Carroll did not have the rights to Bert Bailey's play adaptations, so the plot was based directly on the original work.

To you "Who gave Our Country Birth;" To the memory of you whose names, whose giant enterprise, whose deeds of fortitude and daring were never engraved on tablet or tombstone; To you who strove through the silences of the bush-lands and made them ours; To you who delved and toiled in loneliness through the years that have faded away; To you who have no place in the history of our country so far as it is yet written; To you who have done most for this land; To you for whom few, in the march of settlement, in the turmoil of busy city life, now appear to care; And to you particularly, Good Old Dad, This book is most affectionately dedicated "Steele Rudd".