The Casterton Kelpie Association has been holding the Clark Rubber Australian Kelpie Muster in Casterton, VIC for 20 years. Over that period it has certainly become an iconic event with people travelling from all over Australia to buy or sell their working dogs at what is the Premier Working Dog Auction in Australia. Held over [...]
You have to wonder what goes on in the so-called corridors of power. The latest newsflash from the marbled echelons of Canberra comes in the form of a new tax. How surprising you might say, considering were one of the most overtaxed countries in the world, however this latest slug is set to hit agricultural [...]
I wonder what the ANZACs would think of todays world if they could speak to us from heavens halls. I am sure this world we now inhabit, the lands they fought for, so that we might live with greater freedom and democracy, would leave them puzzled. Or maybe not. For all the advancements we have [...]
Sidney Kidman was born in Adelaide in 1857, leaving his home at age 13 with only 5 shillings and a one-eyed horse that he had bought with his savings. He joined a drover, and learned quickly, later working as a roustabout and bullock-driver, drover, stockman and livestock trader. He made money trading whatever was needed, and [...]
For those of you who are members of one of the many book clubs across our wonderful country you may enjoy these reading group questions for Wild Lands. What is the common bond that brings Kate and Adam together? Who is your favourite character and why? Displacement and dispossession are major themes in the [...]
Are you a writer interested in trying your hand at historical fiction? Here are my top 5 tips: 1. Choose an exact time and place for your book. For example Sydney in the colony of New South Wales, Australia, 1837. Then start reading. 2. Read lots of historical fiction on your chosen time and place so [...]
When I began thinking about my new novel, Wild Lands, as always I was mindful of my own rural background and the pioneering spirit required by my family when they first selected land in the northwest of New South Wales. Ive always drawn on my familys history for inspiration when it comes to writing my [...]
The first shearing on our property took place in 1894, when the merinos that had been overlanded from another of our properties near Inverell, in northern NSW were shorn. This photograph shows that first blade shearing. Originally a small black and white picture, it was enlarged and tinted with colour many years ago, [...]
No-one knows how old this map is. No doubt if I studied it carefully I may well be able to work out the dates as the pink shaded areas depict those lands falling under the rule of the British Crown (British Malaya, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Australia, Canada - among others). I do know [...]
From the Burdekin Writer's Festival in Far North QLD where a croc-wrestling bush poet got into a fight outside the local and had to be taken to hospital by an eminent historian (who says writer's fests are boring?)... to a film crew descending on the property to talk books and farming ...followed [...]
