AustLit

'Geraldine Byrne’s carefully researched social history tells the story of the overland cattle drives across northern Australia to the Kimberley in the 1880s, and of the establishment and development of Rosewood pastoral station, through the lens of station owners Tom Kilfoyle and his son Jack. The Irish Australian Tom Kilfoyle was a great cattleman of exceptional endurance and skill, and his son Jack an independently minded northern Australian character born and bred in the Kimberley pastoral industry. The magnitude of Tom Kilfoyle’s task, droving a herd of cattle for two years over 4000 kilometres, and the nature of pastoral life itself, are encapsulated in their being ‘held up for six months waiting for rain’ (p. 54).'  (Introduction)