It's a good idea the publisher is always included in information about the book to help the potential reader find it. But sing the praises of the publisher? Very rare. So hats off to Allen & Unwin for publishing this wonderful book.

The scope of the book is so tiny, telling of a remote New England village, an hour's drive from Tamworth. There is a main character and a supporting cast of no prominence whatsoever. They are children. The main character is a teacher of 20. No experience of life, nothing much to say for himself.

But the publisher must have seen what a remarkable slice of Australian life this would make.

Peter O'Brien had graduated from the Balmain Teachers College in 1957. He had two years at an inner west Sydney school and found he enjoyed teaching, although he approaches his first classroom nervously.

He thinks he has been reasonably well taught in college, though without excitement, and he has learnt plenty from his several placements during his course.

But as a scholarship boy, he had signed up for two years in the bush. It was the main way the Department of Education could find country teachers. Conscripts, if you like.

Peter met the department's inspector, Mr Flood, in Armidale, who offers Peter three choices of bush schools, Wards Mistake (there really is a village near Armidale called Wards Mistake!), a second village he doesn't remember, and Weabonga.

Without pushing, the inspector is keen for Peter to take Weabonga. The school has been closed, intermittently, because the village couldn't retain a teacher and there are 18 children needing an education.

When the inspector later visits the school to assess progress, one of the wittier scholars describes him to Peter as "more a trickle than a flood".

It is not hard to work out why the others couldn't hack it in Weabonga.

There seems only one possibility of accommodation in the village a dilapidated cottage already housing a family. His "room" is a "cubby" on the veranda, constructed of tar paper, without desk, bookcase, cupboard, or floor covering.

Peter is to eat his dinner alone, after the family, an unvarying diet of baked rabbit, potatoes and squash. For breakfast, two boiled eggs and toast, for lunch stale bread sandwiches of baked rabbit.

Peter is 20 when he arrives at Weabonga. This regime will likely kill him or dement him.

There is a schoolroom for all 18 students. Tom, in Grade Eight is a sensible grounded young man, in high school, doing his work by correspondence but in the schoolroom for discipline and company. There are five children in Grades One and Two, three in Grade Three, five in Grade Four and four in Grade Five. There are 13 boys and five girls.

And one teacher, deeply malnourished, to manage all this. There is no electricity in the village, a weekly mail service, no doctor or any kind of emergency services.

So, we have the setting and the characters of Bush School. How does this become a book? It is the charm and ability of Peter O'Brien's writing to make what follows not only readable but exciting, even thrilling.

He opens up rural Australia in the early 1960s in a way that few writers have ever done.

By good fortune he meets and enjoys the friendship of the town's eldest residents, Perc and Ethel, brother and sister, in quite strange and, in many ways, unsuitable housing, but with some charm.

They struggle to make ends meet, live a remote and lonely life, receiving the papers once a week and tuned in, permanently, to ABC Radio.

The three quickly become firm friends, indeed Peter falls in love with both of them. They share the same values and interests as Peter as progressives and critics of much of rural Australia. Their company, often three times a week, gives him some life apart from the schoolroom.

Peter also finds other, and much better accommodation, starts playing rugby in Tamworth, and develops a bit of a life.

Peter O'Brien would leave Weabonga when his two years were up. The picture he gives of the development of the children under his care is inspiring, reminding readers of the importance of good, dedicated teachers.

And the absolute importance of giving maturing students a say in their own education.

The post-school careers of all 18 children are briefly sketched. All seemed to have had happy and worthwhile lives. Peter O'Brien recognises the importance of the parents in all of this.

But readers of Bush School will see his own remarkable achievement as a teacher of imagination and energy.