Idriess’S Twelfth
p. 42 · Read in the full issue
" Over the Range " : An Account of the Far North-west
TON IDRIESS’S twelfth book is to hand from the publishers, Messrs. Angus and Robertson, of Sydney. It is Over the Range, (6/-) and it is a lively, charac teristically Idriess account of the author’s recent journey with the north-west police patrol through the Kimberley mountains —over 1200 miles of practically unknown Australia/.
Only six years have elapsed since Idriess, then a hard-working unknown journalist, wrote Prospecting -for Gold, and Lasseter’s Last Ride, and followed up his usual success quickly with other good Australian books. Lasseter is now in its 20th edition; Flynn of the In land is in its 16th; Gold Dust and Ashes has gone into 11 editions; and The Cattle King into twelve. Every one of Idriess’s dozen books is selling well.
This is the most remarkable perfor mance in the history of Australian authorship. Certain gentlemen, with definite ideas about their own gifts of authorship and critical faculties, sneered at Idriess’s early books, and talked of “riding on the publicity of a news story.”
But, since then, there have been many Idriess books, and all have gone into many editions. What is the secret?
Simply that Idriess brings to his un affected account of outback Australia a superb knowledge of the wild, a lively sense of the dramatic, a quenchless humour, and a craftsmanship that is al ways improving. He tells us about out back Australia as it is, in all its stark rawness and its queerness of fauna and flora; and every word he says is read eagerly by a public that is sick of sexy novels, and of travel books wherein the scribbling graduates of film-houses and yellow newspapers posture and prattle and are consciously and insistently clever. Idriess now has shown us twelve times the kind of book that is demanded by a numerous and healthy Australian book-loving public.—R.
Mr. A. E. Baker, who has been head overseer for the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd. at Nadi, Fiji, for nearly 20 years, arrived in Sydney from Suva by the Monterey on November 29. He has been transferred to Australia, and his place at Nadi has been taken by Mr.
Crawford, of Ba.
Rev. and Mrs. E. Lawton, of Norfolk Island, have been transferred to Lord Howe Island to take charge of the Anglican Church there. They have re placed Rev. and Mrs. E. C. Coleman, who recently were appointed to bt.
James’s, Pitt Town, New South Wales.
A new minister for N.I. will be
appointed by the Archbishop of Sydney