the true story of the greatest pastoral landholder in modern history As a barely literate youth of thirteen, Sidney Kidman ran away from home and worked as an odd-job boy in a grog shanty in outback Australia. He went on to become the greatest pastoral landholder in modern history, acquiring a legendary reputation both at home and abroad as the Cattle King. Kidman was much more than a grazier. In addition to his many successful business ventures and his contributions to the war effort, he was driven by a grand plan for the remote arid areas of Australia. this kept him locked in a battle with the land - and against drought. Wealth, power, fame and honours did not change Sidney Kidman. He remained the homespun, gregarious bushman for whom men worked with an almost savage loyalty. Greatly admired, he also had many enemies, and in his later years was dogged by controversies and untruths. this book explores the fascinating Kidman legend, and gives a balanced, thoroughly entertaining account of this larger-than-life Australian and his exceptional achievements. 'An addictive read, embracing the romance of the bush and the hardship of the outback.' SUNDAY tIMES

Tells the story of the Gepps Cross abattoirs and saleyard complex, from its utopian concept through its years of growth and operation to its eventual ruin as a victim of competing interests. A comprehensive and abundantly illustrated 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.

The Channel Country is of special interest because its extreme aridity is disrupted unpredictably by summer monsoonal rains, causing massive flooding, and is followed by prodigious growth of plants and reproduction of animals, before returning to daunting conditions of drought. Yet, it is a region teeming with life, both plant and animal, possessing unusual capacities for existing there. It is also a region favoured by hardy pastoralists and their livestock, who have learned to coexist with this harsh climate. In Meanderings in the Bush, the authors describe their many adventures and misadventures in the region, with its climate, its animals and its human inhabitants. They also discuss results of their research which reveals some of the secrets for survival of many of the native animals, including marsupials, rodents, birds and the remarkable desert crab. These studies are cast in the light of both the prehistoric and historic records of the Lake Eyre Basin, including the probable impacts of changing and/or stable climates, Aboriginal occupation, later European pastoral development and the influences of introduced exotic mammals.

'This is a book about the human aspects of life on the land - the stories of success and failure, life and love, of hardship and celebration - and the passion and gritty determination that characterised every family I interviewed.' Author Deb Hunt sets out to discover what makes what makes Australian farming families tick. She travels tens of thousands of kilometres to properties at either end of the country, from a vast, dusty cattle run in outback Queensland to the wheat belt of Western Australia and dairy and sheep farms in Tasmania. She introduces us to eight families who survive, even thrive, on the land despite fires, floods, personal hardship and uncertain economic times. We see a different sort of family life, where the kids are expected to pitch in, the classroom is often the kitchen table, the nearest maternity hospital is a five-hour drive, and generations live and work side by side. We meet the French family, whose connection to the bush goes back seven generations, Philip the Philosopher, who by 29 was managing a property of more than one million hectares carrying 20,000 head of cattle, and the outspoken Roma Brittnell, who was awarded Australian Rural Woman of the Year in 2009. Inspiring, moving and sometimes challenging, these stories provide a window into a way of life that defines the Australian spirit at its best.