AustLit

'The Victoria River country of the Northern Territory is renowned for its enormous cattle stations, beautiful landscapes, huge personalities and its wild history. Dr Darrell Lewis knows this country intimately. Drawing on more than forty years’ research in the Victoria River back country, Darrell’s The Victoria River District Doomsday Book (VRDDB) is an unparalleled achievement by one of the Territory’s most rigorous and prolific historians. VRDDB is an exhaustive dictionary-style account of the region’s history, seen through the lens of the dozens of cattle stations and hundreds of pastoral industry workers of which it is comprised.' (ntl.nt.gov.au/events/celebrating-victoria-river-district-doomsday-book-dr-darrell-lewis )

'The vast deserts of Outback Australia hold many secrets, but there's one great mystery which stands out among all others - the mystery of the lost Leichhardt expedition. In April 1848 Ludwig Leichhardt and six other men set out westward from the Queensland frontier, heading for Swan River settlement in Western Australia. They never arrived. Somewhere in the immensity of the Outback, then almost completely unknown to Europeans, the entire expedition disappeared. For more than 160 years supposed clues to the fate of the expedition have been discovered - human skeletons, old guns and rock paintings, Aboriginal stories of white men being massacred or perishing of thirst, trees marked 'L' or old wagon tracks beyond the frontier. Official and private expeditions have followed up leads, but nothing conclusive has been found. This book draws together and summarises all the search expeditions, assesses the validity of all the claimed 'Leichhardt' relics and the various theories proposed - all the attempts to answer the perplexing question, Where is Dr Leichhardt? ' (Source: TROVE)

'In 1883, pastoralists began to drive great herds of cattle into the Victoria River District of Australia's Northern Territory. They entered a vast tropical land of big rivers, wide plains, and rugged ranges. It was a cattleman's paradise, but it was also a paradise for the Aboriginal people who had lived there for thousands of years. Each side came to see the other as the serpent in the garden - a serpent that had to be banished - and a 20 year war ensued. The cattlemen won, but it was a pyrrhic victory. The coming of the cattle began the destruction of this paradise for both groups. The frontiersmen who came to the district included cattle and horse thieves, outlaws, capitalists, dreamers, drunks, madmen, and others. Together, they established massive stations of up to 12,000 square miles on the traditional lands of the Wardaman, Nungali, Ngaliwuru, and Karangpurru people. This book examines them all, from the explorers of the 1830s and 1850s, to the founders of the big stations in the 1880s and 1890s, and finally at the 'golden era' of the cattle duffers in the early 1900s. Drawing on painstaking research into obscure though rich documentary sources, Aboriginal oral traditions, and first-hand investigations in the region over 35 years, the book pieces together the complex interactions between the environment, the powerful and warlike Aboriginal tribes, and the settlers and their cattle, which produced what truly became A Wild History.' (Source: Goodreads website)