they_called_me_normaThen they called me Norma

by Norma King

ISBN 0 85905 124 2, (2003 new), Soft Cover, 278pp, illustrated, 385grams

$30.00 + POST


The autobiography of Goldfields author/historian and artist, Norma King. She was born in Kalgoorlie in 1922 and lived in various places in the Eastern Goldfields of WA for most of her life, married a miner at the age of seventeen, had ten children and reared nine. She began writing in 1969 after an illness that restricted her physically, and after seven of her children had left home.

She describes her life in towns such as Kalgoorlie, Gwalia, Mertondale, Agnew, Lawlers, Wiluna, Big Bell, in the 1930s and 1940s and what was happening around her during that time. (some of these are now ghost towns) She and her family left Big Bell in the 1950s and moved to Kalgoorlie, where they lived for the next forty years. The book not only describes the big changes in her life during that period, but also the changes in the area.

THE AUTHOR

Her first book, Nickel Country-Gold Country was published in 1972, and was followed by six more. These were, Colourful Tales of the Western Australian Goldfields, The Waldeck Story, Daughters of Midas, Wings Over the Goldfields, (a Fifty-Year History of the Eastern Goldfields Section of the Royal Flying Doctor Service), The Voice of the Goldfields (a 100 Year history of the Kalgoorlie Miner), and The Hannans Club – The first 100 Years.