Book Outback Pioneers by Evan McHugh

Pages: 278  Size: 20cm x 13cm x 2.5cm

In Outback Pioneers, Evan McHugh gathers the enthralling stories of the men and women who opened up the Australian outback and in the process discovered the beauty and terror of this extraordinary country.

We meet the little-known convict explorer John Wilson, the first European to cross the Blue Mountains (though history favours the proper English gentlemen Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson); we follow Australia's greatest drover Nat Buchanan, as he blazes stock routes across this vast continent; and we marvel at the genius and grit of the men who overcome political treachery to build the Coolgardie Pipeline and the Trans-Austalian Railway.

There are some delightful inclusions: a gentle Pakistani cameleer who saves foolhardy expenditioners; a nerdy ham radio operator who invents the pedal radio and paves the way for John Flynn's Flying Doctor; two bush nurses who toil in the ruins of a pub while saving outback lives; and the modern-day pioneers who battle apathy to save endagered wildlife.

'McHugh tells the stories of these great achievers simply and without romatic or other emellishment, which is how these characters would have wanted it' - Courier Mail