GRANDMA CADBURY

Grandma Cadbury's Trucking Tales
( 1987) WINNER 1988 WA YOUNG READERS' BOOK AWARD

Cadbury's grandmother is a truckie. She drives a semi-trailer called Tootsie, a 36-tonne Kenworth with bogie drive wheels and power steering. Cadbury nearly died of shame when she first went on the road, especially when his friends found out. Real grannies are supposed to spend their time quietly in rocking chairs, aren't they? But it isn't very long at all before Cadbury discovers that having a grandma who drives a semi-trailer isn't all bad. In fact, having a granny like Cadbury's could be the best thing that ever happened to a kid!

Grandma Cadbury's Safari Tours (1989)

Cadbury's grandmother has sold Tootsie, her 36-tonne truck, to buy a 22-seater turbo-charged custom-built mini-bus! It isn't long before Cadbury and his grandmother are entangled in more riotous adventures as they conduct safari tours round Australia. They pan for gold, rescue an injured bushwalker, search for snakes. Cadbury thinks his grandmother can get out of any scrape until she rides Firefly in the craziest horse-race you've seen!

Cadbury's daredevil grandmother dreams of owning a Harley motorbike and joining the Glory Rider's bikie gang. It isn't long before she's the proud owner of a large Softail Custom - big enough for two people! Cadbury's mates are green with envy. Blitzing along freeways, Cadbury and Gran are soon on their way to hair-raising adventures. Along the way they tangle with a pack of big bad bikies and come fact-to-face with danger, before Cadbury meets his biggest challenge of all - a girl named Deedie Miller.

Grandma Cadbury's Water World ('97)

Cadbury's Gran is back! In this hilarious fourth book, Grandma Cadbury is challenged to a marathon swim, which is just the start of a water holiday. Invited to stay at a seaside guest house, Cadbury, his gran and the family find themselves surfing, sail-boarding, treasure hunting and tangled up in lots of crazy adventures.

BUSHRANGER SERIES

(Hodder Headline 1996, 1997, 1999)

Basil Bopp the Burper
Basil Bopp's habit of burping is so disgusting no-one wants to know him. Even his mum and dad have run away from home to join the circus! It seems the only way a boy can get a meal is to turn to bushranging. One day an old lady sees Basil's face on a WANTED poster. She smuggles him to her home on the Yelli-Belli Mountain where Basil discovers her simply amazing secret - a habit more atrocious than his own!

Daring Dora and the All-Girl Gang
Dora Agnes Kelly is a daredevil kid of the outback. She can out-kick a kangaroo and swear like a dozen troopers in a terrible temper. Dora's mum and dad are so fed up they decide to send her to Miss Cecilia Dingle's Academy for Refined Young Ladies. But t school Dora meets Thelma Thunderbolt, Alice Donohoe and Edna Starlite and forms an all-girl gang of bushrangers. Together the girls toss their textbooks and turn to a new life filled with daring and dangerous deeds.

Jacob Fang & His Feral Family
Away out in the Gollygosh Gorge in the middle of Australia, a place not marked on any map, is hidden waterhole. And camped by that waterhole is the deadliest, dirtiest, most despicable desperado that ever dilly-dallied in the desert! The bushranger known as Jacob Fang. Jacob Fang is tough - so touch that one look from him makes people faint. Even his own mother! Life is very lonely until one day Jacob hold sup the coach of Schoolmarm Sue. Cupid shoots his arrow and Jacob falls in love...

Dame Nellie Nickabocka, Shooting Star
Dame Nellie Nickabocka was a star of all of Great Britain's Grandest Theatres. But that was many years ago. Now she has gained forty pounds (mostly around her bottom), and has grown a horrible hairy moustache. Deciding on a career re-charge, she migrates to the Great Continent Down Under. There she discovers that bushranging is a job ideally suited to an opera diva!

Billy Fishbone, King of the Kids
On the Buttibotti goldfields, a gang of orphan kids roam wild. Billy Fishbone, his wee sister Matilda, his always-dirty brother Nugget, and his not-so-bright brother Candle are taking a break from the busy life of bushranging. They race around the goldfields knocking over tents, locking old ladies in lavatories, gobbling up the miners' jellybeans and swigging their ginger beer. Something has to be done! Can the strict and stern (and perfectly dressed) school teacher Archibald McBean change the gang's wicked ways? Or can Billy turn the tables and convince McBean to join the gang?

Hairy Hannah and the Grandad Gang
Deep in the Australian bush, in the midst of a family of dingoes, lives Hannah, a red-haired wild child, running around as naked as the day she was born. Then, one night, Hannah is captured by three old bushrangers - Hercules, Samson and Cyril - the infamous Grandad Gang! Before long, the old bushrangers and Hannah are the best of friends. Soon Hannah realises that the Grandad Gang members are too deaf and dotty to look after themselves. When the gang runs out of vital supplies (toilet paper, chocolate biscuits and false teeth), she knows that something has to be done! Hannah devises a devious disguise and dressed as Hair Hannibal, she bravely takes over the gang's bushranging ways.

Desert Dan, the Dunny Man
Dan Dunker, orphan, is descended from a long line of dunny makers, all with Royal Degrees. Left on the doorstep of Matron Maxine's Home for Wretched Waifs, he spends his days scrubbing and rubbing pitties from dawn to dusk.