When Patrick Durack left Western Ireland for Australia in 1853, he was to found a pioneering dynasty and build a great cattle empire across the great stretches of Australia.
With a profound sense of history, his grand-daughter, Mary Durack, has reconstructed the Durack saga - a story of intrepid men and ground-breaking adventure.
This is perhaps the defining book written by Mary Durack. She wrote 15 books, numerous short stories, poetry, plays and film scripts during her life. When she died in 1994 she was working on a screen adaptation for this book.
Contents:
Maps and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Roots
2. Colonial Background
3. The Golden years
4. Digging In
5. Land of their Own
6. Goulburn Days
7. Wedding Bells
8. Prophet of the New Colony
9. Of Plans Deferred
10. Exodus
11. A Land Loved by Birds
12. Land of Waiting
13. The Battling Years
14. Turn of the Tide
15. Closer Settlement
16. Eye Witness
17. New Town in the Wilderness
18. One Thousand Miles to School
19. Western Horizons
20. To Find a River
21. Promised Land
22. Start of the Big Trek
23. The Rule of the Road
24. On to the Territory
25. End of an Epic
26. Meanwhile in Queensland
27. The Golden Year
28. Settling In
29. The Gold and the Grass
30. Nemesis
31. Life and Death in Kimberley
32. Prosperity - at a Price
33. Expanding Boundaries
34. Glimpses of 'The naughty Nineties'
35. Return to Ireland
36. End of an Era
Index
Review:"The best saga of Pastoral Australia ever published ... hard to describe without superlatives ... in a hundred years this book will still be a classic" - Meanjin
