In The Tracks Of Old Bluey

Nat Buchanan was the first European to cross the Barkly Tablelands from east to west and first to take a large herd of breeding cattle from Queensland to the Top End of the Northern Territory. Buchanan created a droving record when he supervised 20,000 head over this route.

In December 2010, Julian Assange signed a contract with Canongate Books to write a book – part memoir, part manifesto – for publication the following year. At the time, Julian said: ‘I hope this book will become one of the unifying documents of our generation. In this highly personal work, I explain our global struggle to force a new relationship between the people and their governments.’ In the end, the work was to prove too personal. Despite sitting for more than fifty hours of taped interviews and spending many late nights at Ellingham Hall (where he was living under house arrest) discussing his life and the work of WikiLeaks with the writer he had enlisted to help him, Julian became increasingly troubled by the thought of publishing an autobiography. After reading the first draft of the book at the end of March, Julian declared: ‘All memoir is prostitution.’ In June 2011, with thirty-eight publishing houses around the world committed to releasing the book, Julian told us he wanted to cancel his contract. We disagree with Julian’s assessment of the book. We believe it explains both the man and his work, underlining his commitment to the truth. Julian always claimed the book was well written; we agree, and this also encouraged us to make the book available to readers. And the contract? By the time Julian wanted to cancel the deal he had already used the advance money to settle his legal bills. So the contract still stands. We have decided to honour it – and to publish. This book is the unauthorised first draft. It is passionate, provocative and opinionated – like its author. It fulfils the promise of the original proposal and we are proud to publish it. Canongate Books, September 2011

In this volume, Drake focuses on the famous pastoral explorers, drovers and trail drivers; the poddydodgers, horse-thieves and rustlers; the wars of the land grabbers with Australian Aborigines and the American Indians; the clashes of lawless western entrepreneurs with the laws of the bit cities in the east; the colourful females who ventured our into a man¿s world and made thier names, the transport by puffing billies and famous stage coach lines and buckjumpers, roughriders and rodeos.

The frontiersmen who came to the Victoria River District of Australia’s Northern Territory included cattle and horse thieves, outlaws, capitalists, dreamers, drunks, madmen and others, from the explorers of the 1830s and 1850s to the founders of the big stations in the 1880s and 1890s, and the cattle duffers in the early 1900s. This book looks at them all. Drawing on painstaking research into obscure and rich documentary sources, Aboriginal oral traditions, and first-hand investigations conducted in the region over thirty-five years, Darrell Lewis pieces together the complex interactions between the environment, the powerful and warlike Aboriginal tribes and the settlers and their cattle, which produced what truly became A Wild History.

Heroes, visionaries and eccentrics! Outback writer Marie Mahood is the author of the much loved Icing on the Damper and A Bunch of Strays. In the 1960s she raised cattle and kids on the world’s most remote cattle station, Mongrel Downs, in the Tanami Desert. Here she writes about the heroes, visionaries and eccentrics of Australia’s vast outback. Her thirty-two characters include the greatest drover and Gulf trekker of them all, Nat Buchanan: prince of poddy-dodgers Harry Readford; the cattle king Sidney Kidman; outback surveyor supreme and all-round good bloke Len Beadell; Aboriginal warrior Jandamarra; Mat Wilson at the NT Depot store; gun shearer Jackie Howe; drover Edna Zigenbine on the Murranji Track; explorer and goldmine Christy Palmerston in the heartland of Cape York Peninsula; eccentrics such as the Gulf Hero and the Barkly Hermit; and drovers who were also painters and poets of repute.

“Frontier Justice is a very powerful and important book. It appears at a particularly significant time given the intense current debate about Aboriginal history. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the story of the Australian frontier.” Professor Henry Reynolds A challenging and illuminating history, Frontier Justice brings a fresh perspective to the Northern Territory’s remarkable frontier era. For the newcomer, the Gulf country—from the Queensland border to the overland telegraph line, and from the Barkly Tableland to the Roper River—was a harsh and in places impassable wilderness. To explorers like Leichhardt, it promised discovery, and to bold adventurers like the overlanders and pastoralists, a new start. For prospectors in their hundreds, it was a gateway to the riches of the Kimberley goldfields. To the 2,500 Aboriginal inhabitants, it was their physical and spiritual home. From the 1870s, with the opening of the Coast Track, cattlemen eager to lay claim to vast tracts of station land brought cattle in massive numbers and destruction to precious lagoons and fragile terrain. Black and white conflict escalated into unfettered violence and retaliation that would extend into the next century, displacing, and in some areas destroying, the original inhabitants. The vivid characters who people this meticulously researched and compelling history are indelibly etched from diaries and letters, archival records and eyewitness accounts. Included are maps with original place names, and previously unpublished photographs and illustrations. “A commanding study of race relations in the remote Gulf country. Tony Roberts uncovers compelling evidence of a litany of violence across some forty-odd years of rough borderlands dispossession in an encompassing, powerful and disturbing history.” Professor Raymond Evans

In this volume of The Wild West, Drake tells stories about the squattocracy, the cattle kings and the land barons; mounted police, sheriffs and posses in the pursuit of their elusive prey; bushrangers and outlaws and why they are so loved in popular fantasy; stockmen, ringers and cowboys; early white settlement and both friendly and hostile contact with indigenous peoples; and six shooters, gun slingers, snider rifles and infamous shoutouts.