Annetta Dunn

House in the Country Annetta Dunn

House in the Country is the enchanting story of a woman who, after divorcing her husband, leaves the pressures of city life in Sydney and moves with her children to a ramshackle house in country New South Wales. Here she faces floods, deadly snakes, misbehaved goats, runaway horses and fisticuff-prone locals as she follows her dream of living with her family under the big skies of the raw Australian countryside. Amidst a menagerie of animals, including Miss Hen, Pup, Millie and Yo-yo the dogs, Margaret and Tilly the goats, and a cast of no-nonsense country folk, she struggles to repair the house and make a life for herself and her family. It's a journey with plenty of challenges - heat, flies, iron-hard earth, dangerously rising rivers, the tribulations of new schools for the kids, a house without plumbing and dunny can for a toilet. But perhaps the greatest challenge is that of being accepted, of feeling at home in a community and creating a place for yourself in which to grow and be loved. Through square-dances in community halls, bush renditions of Cinderella, through nights swimming under the stars in the cool waters of the creek out the back, the family puts life together, piece by piece, and makes its home in a house in the country.