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R. Bownds Author of Australian Mysteries - News - Freebies - September Newsletter 2026
Published about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader it's time once again to touch base.
I was sitting in the car outside the chemist yesterday, waiting for my partner to return, when a young man came down the street pushing a shopping trolley loaded with empty cans and bottles. He carried an overstuffed backpack on his shoulder and wore clothes which appeared to have been slept in. He paused at the street side garbage bin in front of our car and went through its enclosed rubbish searching for those empty treasures. We have our share of homeless people in this small town where I live, and from this young man's appearance, he was one of them.
It made me think about the current high cost of living. Not just food, but other essential services, medical, clothing, fuel if you own a car, and other expenses before you even get to putting a roof over your head. With today's prices, the average wage earner would find it hard to cover the rent and still have enough to buy food for their family.
Is there a level where this madness will end, or will prices keep going up? Wages will need to go up to compensate, and on and on it goes until the lot comes crashing down around us.
Is the world on the brink of another depression? If so, this one may be far greater than the Great Depression of the 30s.
My parents lived through the Great Depression and told us many stories of the hardships of those days. How people would travel for miles when they heard word of a farmer's cow dying, hoping to be offered a cut before the meat became tainted and spoilt.
My mother still had a collection of food stamps. Each stamp was for a different item, like butter, bread, cheese, milk, and eggs. Even laundry powder and floor cleaner were rationed.
They were frugal folk, probably for this reason. Little luxuries we spend money on now they considered a waste. But Mum wasn't entirely against a treat occasionally, and each shopping day (once a month back then) she'd always buy a block of chocolate which we shared and enjoyed in the car on the way home.
Sometimes it's the simple things in life that give us the most pleasure.
Death and The Devil
Death and The Devil
Book 5 in The Mara Mysteries is going through the slow progress of line and copy editing. Once these edits are done, I'll read it through and if I'm happy, chapters will start filtering into my proof-readers' inboxes around the end of October.
I have paperback copies, signed or unsigned, available through my website or direct through my Payhip store. Including glossy cover paperback copies of the short story Murder on the Murray.
These Ebooks below are only available through my website or Payhip store.
Caffeine-fueled Author of Dark and Twisted Fiction
I write dark and twisted thrillers featuring dangerous women, cold-blooded assassins, and survivors who turn the tables—violently. If you like fiction that pushes boundaries and heroines who don’t play nice, you’re in the right place.
Hello Reader it's time once again to touch base. My father was a farmer who turned his hand to anything where he could make enough money to feed the family. We trapped rabbits throughout Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Mined gold for some time in Western Australia. Dad also farmed wheat and sheep in Western Australia until a flood wiped out the crops and the bank threatened to foreclose. This was back in the 60s. Dad sold the farm, paid off the bank, and we moved back to South...
Hello Reader. Continuing our 1969 Queensland adventure. After cutting East, we headed north from Miles through Taroom and across the mountains towards Cracow. It wasn't raining in this part of Queensland, and the roads were dry, dusty, potholed, and rough. The mountain road, no wider than two vehicles. A sharp drop off on the downside and a steep bank of rocks, trees (both alive and dead) and underbrush on the other. Dad out in front with the car and caravan, my brother Des in the centre...
Hello Reader In my last newsletter I started the story of our trip from South Australia to Queensland back in 1969 including our encounter with the great train robber Ronald Biggs. After we dropped Ronald Biggs and the man he was travelling with off in St George we continued up the Moonie Highway. It was still raining and flood water lay everywhere to the point where it was dangerous to even drift one wheel off the bitumen in fear of being bogged or worse. Not great on a narrow road not much...
