Back o' Cairns

Description

Ion Idriess, Australia?favourite adventure writer, went to North Queensland prospecting at a time when the fabulous country ack o?airns?as being opened up. It was a time when the great jungle scrubs were falling to the settler?axe, new towns were springing up as mineral wealth was discovered and the new railway pushed inland. It was a time when the talk around the campfires was full of the exciting exploits of the great pathfinders - men like Mulligan, Doyle, Atherton and Palmerston - and of the search for a route from the coast to the hinterland. All the colour, excitement and hard, courageous struggle of the era have been captured by Ion Idriess in these pages. Idriess found more than gold; he found the true beauty and fascination of the North, and makes it come alive in his stories of the unforgettable men and women who were its pioneers.

Ion Llewellyn Idriess OBE (1889-1979) was a prolific author who wrote more than 50 books over 43 years. During World War I he saw action with the Fifth Light Horse Regiment. After repatriation he travelled widely through remote regions of Australia as well as Torres Strait and Papua New Guinea before settling in Sydney. His books include Flynn of the Inland, Lasseter's Last Ride and The Desert Column.