Hear The Train Blow is a classic autobiography of a young girl, Patsy Adam-Smith, growing up in the Australian bush during the Great Depression. Patricia Jean Smith and her sister Kathleen (known affectionately to all as Miss Mickie) are railway children, their father a fettler with the railways and their mother the local station and post mistress. Patsy recounts how they would shift repeatedly from one location to another, following the work: Nowingi, Quambatook, Wrragul, Drouin, Bunyip, Briagalong, Wingeel, Minyip, Monomeith and Penshurst.
But it was the tiny one-pub town of Waaia, in the centre of Victoria's rich wheat belt, which kept drawing them back time and again.
These were the days of yabbing and rabbiting, of bush girls riding bareback on ponies, of bush race meetings and country balls. Patsy writes with charm of the people and places which form the tapestry of her young life. Her proud Catholic family, the farmers, the railway labourers, the swaggies, and other assorted characters of the district.
Particularly heart-wrenching are those chapters of the book dealing with the hardships endured during the Great Depression, by individual families and communities alike.
The book closes with the outbreak of World War II. Like so many of her generation, 17 year old Patsy is drawn away from her parents' home and local community to take up wartime duties.