Ruth Bonetti – författare

St Lucia, the Brisbane suburb famed for its university campus, emerged despite world wars, Spanish Influenza and Depression. In the 1950s, kangaroos hopped across open paddocks; snakes slithered through scrub. The sanitary cart, ice man, milkman and whistle-tooting postman traversed rutted dirt roads to service the community. And, each morning, sun-warmed milk churned the stomachs of the students at Ironside State School.

Then, as bold new scaffolding reached for the sky, people watched, amazed, and asked Who could build this huge mansion-with an elevator in it-amid post war building constraints?

In this St Lucia setting, a wide-eyed child of the outback overcame her terror of big schools, big cities, and big universities. A man of vision, faith and love inspired Ruth to rise above such challenges.

This is the story of her grandfather. The third book of Ruth Back Bonetti''s Midnight Sun to Southern Cross trilogy gives his own voice from interviews and voluminous correspondence, to answer the question: What drove this Migrant-Made-Good?

At the end of the 19th century Finland is a dark and repressive place. Pacifist and political dissenter Karl Johan Back is conscripted to fight for the Russian despots that occupy his country. In 1899 he flees to an untamed land on the far side of the world. Finding refuge on ridges overlooking the Byron Bay lighthouse in northern New South Wales, he grows orchids and lush tropical fruit.

Intrigued by her ‘black sheep’ great-uncle, Ruth Bonetti pieces together the motives that propelled his flight. Finnish relatives share a treasure-trove of letters that provide answers to the many questions raised by Karl Johan’s quest for freedom.

Why did Russian military police pursue him as far as Suez? Why did he publish under a pen-name? And, most intriguing of all, why did he implore his family to burn his letters?

In the tradition of great family migration stories, Midnight Sun to Southern Cross continues the saga of the Back brothers’ flight from Russian occupied Finland to Australia as the nineteenth century turned into thetwentieth.From frozen Finland to the lush rainforests of northern New South Wales, to the dry and dusty sheep country of western Queensland, you follow the highs and lows of their new life under the Southern Cross.It is an extraordinary tale of success, failure, hard work and dreaming. What drove the wheeler-dealer Wilhelm Anders Back, known as WA, to become in his time Australia’s richest Finn? And what stirred his eccentricwriterly elder brother Karl Johan, KJ, pacifist and political dissenter? What of those who stayed behind in Finland, and bravely struggled to oust the Russians from their homeland? This book, and its predecessor, Burn MyLetters, are timely in the centenary year of Finnish Independence. WA’s granddaughter Ruth contrasts his and KJ’s formative years in Finland with her own upbringing in outback Queensland. Her voyage of discovery and self-discovery uncovers research in Finland and Australia, and interweaves her own transformation from shy bush girl to speaker and musician.