Marngrook and Other Award-winning Stories from the Stringybark Australian History Award

"People don't understand how desperate you have to be to eat a boot," he replied. "Exploration of uncharted territory is very demanding, especially in the arctic. They don't realise what we went through: the bitter cold, the scurvy, the unknown. Men died of starvation out there; they did desperate things. These were good men reduced to scraping moss from rocks to survive. Yes, we ate boot leather as well, but it was an act of desperation, a last ditch attempt at survival. They act like I ate my boots as a matter of choice."

— from Act of Defiance by Harold Mally