Back in print after 60 years. Ion Idriess was one of those who set out from Derby with the ending of the Wet. This is the story of his wanderings in 1932-3 and what he heard and saw along the way, at a time when wireless and air and motor transport were rapidly changing life in the North and North-west.
MAN TRACKS tells of stirring episodes in the pursuit, of lawbreakers in the primitive lands. Every chapter is authentic. Patrols through the Kimberleys, the wild Fitzmaurice River country, the nor'-west of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Central Australia; each incident recorded from the lips of the pursuers and pursued whether ......
When Dick and “jack Idriess went aboard the Nancy Bell at Cooktown – they thought they were signing on for a trochus-fishing expedition, would earn some money, and go back to gold prospecting. Cross-eyed Joe, a wily Filipino skipper was after something more valuable than trochus. With the appearance of the Japanese manned black lugger the boys ......
Idriess latest book is the romance of the Edie Creek and Bulolo diggings, situated inland from Salamau; and the associated names of diggers as "Shark Eye Bill" (William Park), Matt Crowe, Jim Preston, Arthur Dowling, Frank and Jim Pryke... men who in pre-war years crept across the frontier, defying the Germans and dodging the headhunters.
In the 22nd edition of this book, Ion Idriess tells of his beginnings, of his childhood in Lismore, Tamworth and Broken Hill, of his apprenticeship in bushcraft, and of the growing love for the Australian Outback which illumines all his work. He tells of the jobs he had, - as rouseabout, horse breaker, horse tailer, shearer.
This books looks at Idriess and his Aboriginal prospecting friends, the Bairds, working their way through far north-east Queensland over 100 years ago, from the Daintree and the Bloomfield Rivers to Mount Molloy.
In 1920, though, as the three ex-diggers talked across the bar at the West Coast, swapping stories of the War and goings-on in Cooktown and along the coast, the pioneer vision would have still been fresh and sustained by hope and dreams. All that was needed was a little luck – which might come from the Chinese gambling den across the way, or at ......
The Fourth Manual written for Australian soldiers and civilians in 1942, when invasion by the Japanese seemed imminent. "To attack and to ambush, to snipe and raid is the job of the Australian Guerrilla. By rifle and grenade, by machine-gun and mortar to kill them, harry them, trap them, grant them not one moment's peace day or night. Break their ......