Tradie Tom Lowe inspires his mum Christine’s first children’s book
In a case of art imitating life, a knockabout tradie and his mates from North Avoca have inspired a new children’s book which explores having ‘someone’s back’.
Central Coast
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When Tom Lowe was growing up at North Avoca he and his mates were always getting up to mischief of some sort or the other.
But the one thing that never changed was they always had each other’s back.
His mum Christine Lowe has drawn loosely on his antics to write her first children’s book Tradie Tom and the little yellow dinghy.
“One of the reasons I came to write the book and a few more manuscripts was that during my time as a mother, I have learned that I have two completely different children,” Lowe said.
“Both of them are now mature adults. My daughter is calm, diligent, sensible and has worked hard all her school and adult life to achieve her successes and it is paying off nicely, whereas my son, well he was — and still is to some extent — just here to shake life out of the world, a whirlwind on two legs.
“He has got up to mischief all his life and many people used to say to me `with all of his antics, you should write a book’.”
When she retired and downsized to Sydney, Lowe found the time she needed to put pen to paper.
“One common theme though with this two-legged whirlwind was that we realised he always had some of his mates involved in the mischief but they all stuck together no matter what the outcome,” she said.
“My son developed these many friendships mainly through playing team games such as rugby and soccer and tag football where you have to work together and trust that your team will be right along with you but also through friendships at school.
“He and his mates still have each other’s back. Even now that they have found their own respective places in life regarding jobs and some even have their own families and most of them have become good, caring, thoughtful young men, their loyalty and trust in each other is quite something to see. If someone is needed for whatever reason, they don’t think twice about jumping on a plane or train or driving for hours to ‘have my mates back’ and it was this type of behaviour I wanted to focus on.”
Lowe said hopefully if “mateship” was encouraged in its true form early in life it could go a long way to reducing bullying because they would know someone would “have their back”.
Tradie Tom and the little yellow dinghy is published by Austin Macauley Publishers.
