Gone Bush with Uncle Quinn: Part 4

By CHARGER MORRISON, Illustrator MARTIN BAILEY

I was about halfway through a book called The Trail Blazers, which as you might have already guessed was also about mountain men, when Mum informed me one night after tea that my Uncle Quinn was coming to stay for a little while. The way Mum talked, you would have thought the whole thing had been specially arranged just for my benefit, but she was the only one getting excited. I couldn't have cared less.

I'd never met this Uncle Quinn of mine and had only ever heard his name mentioned once or twice, but that night Mum told me all about him. Honestly, she was like a budgie on steroids in verbal overdrive. Strictly speaking, my Uncle Quinn wasn't really my uncle and we were only distantly related through him marrying a second cousin of my father's. At least that's how I think it came about. It was all very complicated. Mum had known Uncle Quinn when she was growing up in the Wanganui River District and going by the way she talked, I suspected she had something of a schoolgirl crush on him, even though he had to be at least 20 years older.

Publisher: Reed Publishing, $12.95
Age group: 10+ years