The Guara Books

The Gift-Wrapped Pony

The Calf on Shale Hill

Eight Days at Guara

Shadow Summer

Anne Farrell also writes under the name Anne Heazlewood.  She was born on 24 June, 1954, in Latrobe, Tasmania.  She was one of several authors the paperback arm of Hodder & Stoughton, Knight books, picked up in the 1970s in the UK.  Knight picked their pony books very well, as the Gift-Wrapped Pony, and Mavis Thorpe-Clark’s The Pony from Tarella, which they also published, are both excellent reads.  Alas, no more books from the Guara series, from which Gift-Wrapped Pony comes, were published in the UK.  All the books of the series are, however, easy to find; not only in Australia.

The Mitchell family are the heroes of the Guara books.  The first book of the series opens with the devoted escapologist, grey Arum being found in the hay field.  She has learned how to open the pony paddock gate, but Mr Mitchell is not impressed with this cleverness, and threatens to sell Arum if she carries on her wicked ways.  

Sources:
Austlit

The Gift-Wrapped Pony
Hodder & Stoughton, Australia, 1973
Germany, Boje, 1973
Brockhampton, London, 1974
Knight, London, pb, 1977

The Mitchell family’s pony, Arum, is a confirmed escaper, and at last their father has had enough.  If
they can’t stop her getting loose, she will be sold, and so the family start their Save Arum campaign.

Anne Farrell

The Calf on Shale Hill
Hodder & Stoughton, 1974, illus Astra Lacis
Brockhampton Press, 1974

“ Lesley and Ian who find a neighbouring farmer's newly-born calf on Shale Hill, abandoned by it's mother. It is a runt -
"Skerrick", they chrsten it, so small that their neighbour decides it is not worth saving. But Lesley cannot leave the
calf to die; and so she embarks on her plan to care for it in secret: a simple decision that leads to untold complications
, especially when eccentric Uncle Arthur comes to live in the cottage on Shale Hill. “

Many thanks to Konstanze Allsopp for the picture.

Eight Days at Guara
Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1976, illus Astra Lacis

The young Mitchells are unexpectedly left to cope on their own for 8 days: which proves to be more of an effort
than they anticipate, particularly as they are trying to keep their unparented state a secret!

Shadow Summer
Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1978, illus Astra Lacis

Many thanks to Danyele Foster for the picture.
 

Other books:

A Night to Forget
Lane Cove, New South Wales : Hodder and Stoughton, 1977.

Bibliography - Pony Books Only