BACK TO THE OLD SELECTION

It's 1886 in a bark hut on the Darling Downs. Things are dire for the Rudd family, the drought is biting and the bills are mounting up. Will Dad find a way of paying the bills? Will the bear industry save their bacon? Will Sarah find true love? Will Joe ever learn? Will the mystery of the Rudd’s adopted son be solved? And will it rain by Christmas?

With folk music accompaniment, this 1996 adaptation by Queenslander Richard Fotheringham brings Rudd's original characters to life.

Steele Rudd is the pen name of Arthur Hoey Davis. Davis grew up in a bark hut near Toowoomba and in the late 1890s, penning the stories that would later be published as On Our Selection and Our New Selection.

This play is not the same as "On Our Selection" or the contrived "Dad and Dave" stories that stemmed from Bert Bailey's and others' treatment of Rudd's characters. It is much more sympathetic to the down-to-earth characters that Rudd wrote about in his original unstaged adaptation "In Australia, or The Old Selection". This production finally returns the "Rudd" family name to his beloved characters.

Performances:

• Cobargo Folk Festival Sat 25 February 2012 @ 2pm
  (festival passes available from cobargofolkfestival.com)
  
  
• Pambula Town Hall Sat 3 March 2012 @ 2pm and 7.30pm
  
  
• Candelo Town Hall Sat 10 March @ 7.30pm

 Tickets available from Bendigo Bank Pambula or at the door.