📚 Book Launch || 'Rachel' by Jeff McGill
On Wednesday night the College had the privilege of hosting the book launch of Rachel, by our well-known and active community member, Jeff McGill in the Mary Sheil Centre.
Rachel was Jeff's great-great-grandmother, and he has drawn on the history from his family and used the research he had gathered over four decades to tell this inspiring story, bringing Rachel and her family and friends alive.
Jeff McGill - Author of 'Rachel'
It truly is a wonderful story. As you read it, you will be taken back into the 19th Century, to simple wooden huts by riverbanks, where women cooked on wood stoves and gave birth at home. Jeff conjures up the majesty of the granite outcrops of the Warrumbungles, the beautiful wildflowers in spring, the dusty hot summers of a drought, and the tall grasses after a good rain.
Rachel became a hugely respected figure in the district, and something of a folk hero for her support of women and men being treated poorly, and clearly, she also looms tall in the McGill family today. We are fortunate that Jeff has pieced together her story, to give us an idea of what life was like for women on the land in the late 19th Century, and how this particular feisty woman made such an impact on her community.
