Overview

Powerful and moving, Bidhi Galing (Big Rain) celebrates the Wiradyuri heroes of the Great Flood of Gundagai in 1852, told through the eyes of a young girl who is rescued from the raging floodwaters by her father. 2024 CBCA Notable book Wagadhaany grew up near the Marrambidya Bila. She loved dancing in the rain and listening to her father, Yarri, tell her stories about life on Wiradyuri ngurambang. When white people started building on the floodplains, Yarri was worried. He knew the power of the bila and tried to warn the strangers, but they would not listen. Years later, the big rains came ... This is the story of the Great Flood of Gundagai in 1852 and the Wiradyuri heroes, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, who paddled bark canoes through raging floodwaters, risking their lives to save countless others.   Anita Heiss’s powerful text, accompanied by Samantha Campbell’s evocative illustrations, is a gift of Wiradyuri culture, knowledge and language, sharing a resonant message for our times.

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9781761105258

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Dr Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of 23 books; non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and children’s novels. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the GO Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. Anita is also the Publisher at Large of Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster cultivating First Nations talent, and a board member of the National Justice Project and Circa Contemporary Circus. As an artist in residence at La Boite Theatre, she adapted her novel Tiddas for the stage. It premiered at the 2022 Brisbane Festival and was produced by Belvoir St for the Sydney Festival in 2024. Her novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, about the Great Flood of Gundagai, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Indigenous Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the 2022 ABIA Awards. Anita’s first children’s picture book is Bidhi Galing (Big Rain), also about the Great Flood of Gundagai. Anita enjoys running, eating chocolate and being a creative disruptor. Samantha Campbell grew up in the Northern Territory and lives in Alice Springs. She is descended from the Dagoman people from Katherine and as a child lived in remote communities across the Top End. Her first book, Alfred’s War, written by Rachel Bin Salleh, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards and the Speech Pathology Australia’s Book of the Year Awards. Her other books include Aunty’s Wedding by Miranda Tapsall and Joshua Tyler, Brother Moon by Maree McCarthy Yoelu, and Freedom Day by Rosie Smiler and Thomas Mayor.  

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