“Goodbye Crackernight” – Great Review in The Wentworth Courier

This review on Goodbye Crackernight has just been published in Sydney’s Wentworth Courier. Have a read!

Author Justin Sheedy will launch his book, Goodbye Crackernight, at Surry Hills Library this Saturday. (Pic by Alan Place - good bloke.)

BOOK A BLAST FROM THE PAST – by David Mills

WHICHEVER wasy you look at it, 1970s Sydney was a pretty groovy place, and to have been a kid in that era was a massive good fortune.

It was a time of simple fun and few rules, when kids would entertain themselves, roaming the streets on Dragsters or Malvern Stars, slurping on a Sunnyboy or chugging down a peach-flavoured Moove.

It was a more innocent time, before the fear of environmental catastrophe, terrorism and stranger danger cast a pall over almost everything.

Author Justin Sheedy has dug deep into his memories of growing up in 1970s Sydney to produce his first book, Goodbye Crackernight, which he is launching at the Surry Hills Library this Saturday.

“It’s a shared memoir; it’s a story of the era,” Sheedy explained.

Central to Sheedy’s narrative is the long-departed tradition of cracker night, an annual celebration that would light up suburban skies, and was up there with Christmas and birthdays.

“Cracker night was a night of sky-rockets, bungers, po-has, thunders, tom thumbs, ball-shooters, throwdowns, Roman candles, Catherine wheels and more,” Sheedy says in his book. “If my birthday celebrated my birth, Christmas the birth of Christ, then cracker night was my childhood’s annual pagan festival. One night a year, the infinite normality of the suburbs was shot with utter magic.”

Memories of cracker night, Sheedy said, create an instant bond for members of Generation X.

“(Gen Xers) seem to really connect with the simplicity of life, growing up as kids in the 1970s, ” he said. “The bikes, the games, the fact that we didn’t have mobile phones, the fact that we didn’t play Playstations. We were not wired into technology like kids today. We were outside, playing in the streets; we made our own electricity.”

Goodbye Crackernight will be launched at Surry Hills Library on Saturday, from 4-6pm. RSVP to 8374 6230. More information at www.crackernight.com.

So a massive thanks to David Mills and The Wentworth Courier.

For a Post-Launch Review, click HERE.

JUSTIN’S LATEST BOOK, “NOR THE YEARS CONDEMN”, NOW AVAILABLE AT SMASHWORDS! CLICK HERE!