Warren Fahey’s Tucker Track draws together some of the lore, songs and recipes that he has gathered in his many years of roaming this country as one of Australia’s premier folklorists. It’s a ragtag collection of bits and bobs, organised thematically into chapters and then in varying-length sections, listed in alphabetical order. I found myself wondering exactly what its purpose was. Initially, I thought it was a terrific reference for clarifying all those scraps of half-remembered information you pick up along the way—a kind of Schott’s Miscellany of Anglo-Australiana—but it has no index so that doesn’t really work. It doesn’t work as a cohesive, linear read either. The ‘bitty-ness’ of the information included makes for a very jerky reading experience and there is a significant repetition rate, even between one paragraph and the next. So how does it work? For mine, it’s a dipper. A book you’d turn to if there’s a song or saying that’s been niggling at you, but you can’t quite remember it—and you have time on your hands to go hunting through the book for it. Otherwise I missed the point of this title. A grab bag of someone’s knowledge, while fascinating in parts, does not necessarily make a book.