ALL ABOARD!’ yelled Dad, blasting the whistle. ‘FULL STEAM AHEAD.’ Pearl wound in the mooring lines, coiling them on deck. She raced to the stern and saw the wake bend away. She peered inside the paddle boxes, watching the great shaft turn the wheels, churning and splashing. Pearl Collins was born in 1911 in Renmark, South Australia. She spent her childhood on the PS Alpha, sailing up and down the Darling River trading goods. The Collins family bought and traded in everything from flour and tea, to jewellery and wood. They even sold pianos! This narrative non-fiction picture books follows Pearl, who went on to become the first woman river boat captain in Australia and, for many years, the only female skipper on the Darling and Murray rivers. In particular, a true incident where their boat became stuck for six months mid-river until the rains came. The story is exciting, educational and features a brave girl character. Educational endmatter will share Pearl’s story, who was the inspiration for Nancy Cato’s beloved classic All The Rivers Run, as well as look at the important of the paddle steamers for the Murray-Darling region and beyond. Paddle steamers covered some 12,000km of Australian waterways around South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland from the 1850s to the 1930s.
