WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Comes with an Active Table of Contents.    This history is full of vivid details of the hard life of the first explorers and pioneers.    It covers the period from 1600 to 1901. It has all the makings of an adventure story with epic shipping voyages, politics, starvation, searches for water and minerals, convicts, and hard work.  In most countries, the story of the European settlers creating villages...

Patty spent the first thirty three years of her life living with her family on remote outback station properties - Old Bando, Minetta, Old Outstation - in south west Queensland, Australia. When her brother, Kerry developed a brain tumor, they moved to live in Charleville - a small outback town. Patty has an understanding of the land, and a great love of reading. Look beyond the words to a life lived devoid of any luxuries, without ever a complaint, but full of simple joys, happiness and lo...

Living in the wilder parts of Australia has its challenges.These are the true stories of one person's journey from Australia's suburbs to the remote northern Outback, and then to remote rural Tasmania.It is a story of deadly snakes, bush drumming, killer bicycles, Tasmanian tigers, and barramundi fishing.Compiled by Matt Flynn, a former Northern Territory journalist who also publishes fishing and outdoors magazines.

Short poems by Elzabeth Hockins - a poet from the Australian Outback

Peter Moore left the city behind in 1952 to become part of a dying breed - a long-distance drover. In My Droving Days we follow his progress through the 1950s as he rubs shoulders with the larger-than-life characters - and their dogs and horses - who trekked along the outback stock routes of western Queensland and New South Wales.Meet the world's worst cattle dog and the station hand, Charlie, who blows an outside toilet (and its contents) sky high; thrill to the high dram...

It looked bleak and predictable for little Keelen Mailman: an alcoholic mother, absent father, the horrors of regular sexual and physical assault and the casual racism of a small outback town in the sixties. But somehow, despite the pain and deprivation, the lost education, she managed to absorb her mother's lessons: her Bidjara language and culture, her obligations to Country, and her loyalty to her family.So it was no surprise to some that a girl who could hide for a year in her ...

While resisting eviction from the Queensland family property at the start of the Great Depression, Emma McKenna's father is shot dead. Emma is left destitute, with her crippled mother and twelve-year-old twin brothers to care for. But she is not easily defeated and fights back.In her struggle to survive she must overcome, heartless wealthy relatives, racial bigotry, child abuse, corrupt financiers and choose between the love of two very different men: one a wealthy Sydney lawyer inv...

The early wealth of Queensland depended on slavery, known in Australia as Blackbirding. South Sea islanders were tricked or forced aboard slave ships, then sold to the highest bidder and forced to cut cane on the northern sugar plantations.Beautiful young Kiri, destined for slavery is rescued from her fate by half-breed Ben Luk, a prospector who plans to become a respectable businessman in Brisbane after acquiring wealth in the Palmer River goldfields.However racial prejudice...

Droving in outback Queensland was a roaring trade in the late 1940's and 50's. Australia lived off the sheep's back with wool being one pound sterling for one pound of wool. Everyone had money.Sheep and cattle needed to be taken from place to place. It was common to see at least six droving camps taking sheep or cattle across the outback of south-west Queensland from property to property.This book is about the life of Harry Williams, who wanted to be a drover, the same as h...

An earthy, entertaining collection of yarns about twenty larger-than-life outback characters. Meet Ron Canlin, who one day began sculpting the sandstone walls of his opal mine. Ten years later, every drive and tunnel in Ron's claim is full of wonderful sculptures - the eighth wonder of the world. Or Peter Venables, with his flowing white beard, puffing his pipe like a character from the pioneering 1800s, whose teams of Clydesdales plough, sow and harvest the crops they eat. Or Janie Marsha...

The gold rush begins, and Kate O'Mara is determined to never go hungry again.Kate O'Mara, orphaned by the great potato famine, is driven by her fear of hunger – first to take the four-month voyage to the other side of the world, then to consider the long, dangerous journey along an unformed track to the remote north of South Australia. Brigid Mulcahey has been with her since the workhouse, and begs her not to put her life in danger, but Kate must secure a job....

'From the helicopter I could see the property's waterholes surrounded by paperback trees, its red-stone cliffs lit by the rising sun. And grass, endless seas of grass. Here was the vision splendid: Nat Buchanan's grass castle. Gurindji country. And my country, Australia.'This is big country, the outback, home to the largest cattle and sheep stations in the world. Yet few of us know what goes on behind the farm gate. What's life really like when next door is 500 kilometres away, and ...