A delightful adventure across Australia and New Zealand.

What a brave and adventurous young lady Elizabeth was.

I loved the author’s retelling of her mother’s travels across Australia and New Zealand. I read the short story prequel as well which gave lovely insight into Elizabeth’s nature.

She took the opportunity of seeing Australia, making new friends and finding work, with both hands and never missed the chance to try something different. Really enjoyed her story.

I love historical novels about strong women. And when you have a tough cookie (and a cuppa) of a woman in a real-life story, even better.
Sue Bavey has written this memoir of her mother’s travels to Australia and New Zealand on a ‘ten-pound Pom’ ticket of a lifetime through her mum’s letters home and diary entries. It’s a wonderful insight into a lost world. Mum Liz’s letters home are endlessly fascinating, and I so enjoyed following her travels as she goes it alone, working her way around countries so very different to her own and finding friendship and love along the way.

Sue Bavey’s latest book provides a detailed account of her mother, Liz’s, experiences as a young woman in post-World War II Britain and her subsequent journey to Australia through the “ten-pound-poms” scheme. Liz, having lived through wartime hardships, found the prospect of moving to Australia for £10 appealing, given the economic challenges of the time.

Just as she is about to set off, her travelling companion pulls out. At 24, Liz is already an independent young woman. Pragmatic and stoic, Liz meets this setback head-on.
The “ten-pound-poms” scheme was the Australian government’s socially engineered migration plan to persuade young British people to move there. The advertising campaign was so effective it lured thousands of hopefuls. But when they arrived, not only did the authorities confiscate their passports, but for some, the living conditions were nothing like what they promised.

Young, solo female travellers think nothing of hopping on planes to new destinations today. I wonder how they’d manage cooped up in shared cabins for three weeks on board a less-than-luxurious passenger ship?

This epistolary memoir is a fascinating insight into the life of a trail-blazing young female backpacker. A winning combination of adventure travel, post-war history and migration.

I was an early reader of this book and received a free copy.

I enjoyed being an early reader of this book, feeling quite like part of the family as our intrepid young Liz leaves the comfort of home and launches into new adventures in Australia and New Zealand. She sounds like the sort of traveling companion one would love to have, and I reflected, as I read it, how much more active and seeking of adventure that generation was compared to - dare I say it - The Youth of Today. (Oh, I know there are exceptions!) Liz makes friends easily, seizes every chance to go places and do things and takes adversity in her stride. I appreciated the photos that are part of the book and found it an easy, relaxing, cheerful read. Isn’t that exactly what we all need sometimes?

I really enjoyed Sue's first book 'Lucky Jack'. It meant I had high hopes for 'Kookaburras, Cuppas & Kangaroos'. I wasn't disappointed. I've lived all over the world, but have been able to take planes and excess baggage. Reading how different traveling was in the 1960s was a real eye-opener. Sue made me feel as though I was on the journey. It's a common theme throughout as I now feel as though I was in Australia in the decade before I was born! I've enjoyed this book so much I even named it as one of my top 3 independent books of the year

Really interesting story of a young woman's journey to Australia and New Zealand in the early 1960s. What an experience it must've been, and how brave she was to travel so far alone. I enjoyed the descriptions of the many places she visited, and the different lifestyle sixty years ago. Told through diaries and letters home, this format works really well.

This book is a fascinating window into a young English girl's life in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s. I loved learning about day-to-day life in this period, when things were very different to today. It was also very interesting seeing these countries through the eyes of a 'ten pound pom'. Recommended for those interested in recent antipodean history.