A Look At Australia's

Changing North

Although author George Farwell was born in England and did not come to Australia until he was a young man (he visited Tahiti en route; was an extra in the first “Mutiny on the Bounty” film; and searched for the Pinaki treasure), he has long since established himself as one of the most “authentic” and readable writers on Australia's lonely outback.

Cape York To The Kimber

LEYS, his latest and ninth book with an Australian setting, is an evocative, informative travel book about the northernmost part of the continent—an area that most Austra lians have never seen and never will.

In six months, Farwell’s travels took him from the sugar towns of Queensland’s Barrier coast, to the pearling centre of Thursday Island and the vast cattle stations and mining centres of the Gulf country and the Kimberleys.

In those six months, Farwell talked and lived with hundreds of the fascin ating people of that sparsely settled land—the drovers, pearlers, mission aries, cattle buyers, prospectors, miners and station managers—and in so doing picked up a wealth of in formation which he has set down in his book in lively, entertaining fashion.

We learn, for instance, that big changes are coming over the cattle country. Whereas a few years ago, the only way to get a mob of cattle from the stations to market was to move them on the hoof over hun dreds of miles of dusty tracks, in an other 10 years these marathon drov ing trips may be things of the past.

Since 1960, a new means of trans put the cattle boat—has been operating from the Albert, Norman and Nassau Rivers that flow into the . of Carpentaria, and the Etheridge and Croydon Shires of Queensland are now thinking of put ting down all-weather roads suitable tor motor transport. The cattle boats are already carrying 10,000 head of cattle a year to the Querrah meat works at Cairns.

As author Farwell says, the even tual complete change-over from droving to motorised and sea trans port will bring “a long, heroic pas end” Q ueens * an d history to an . Minerals are also playing a big part in transforming Australia’s lonely deno h .-t a 7u n b . elieves that the va st bauxite (the raw material ot aluminium) around Weipa, on the

western coast of Cape York Penin sula, will eventually bring settlements all over the peninsula.

As the deposits are in an area which takes in much of the Cape York Aboriginal Reserve, the working of them will eventually mean the de struction of the way of life of the natives who live there.

On this subject, Farwell says typi cally: “Something of great value will be lost when the dignified and naked aboriginal, warrior, hunter, and in comparably skilled tracker, finally discards his woomera and long

shafted spear for a jackhammer a lathe; when he pays cash for 11 food over a refrigerated counter i stead of stalking wild game, divti for lily roots and spearing turtle fra a bark canoe; when he lives in a tw< bedroom cottage and watches tel vision, votes at union meetings ai sings pop songs in the place of the stirring animalistic chants that st echo through the paperbarks by son pandanus-screened lagoon.

“But then I have never had enjoy the privations of living sui an idyll, nor had to keep myself we fed while doing so. I have never hj to endure the pleasures of circm cision with stone knives, sleep on t] ground without clothes in the mo quito-haunted Wet, feel an emp belly when fish or lizards or gru were scarce, spend nights in terror the hostile spirit-world, fear tl malign influence of sorcerers crouch in the bush as my trib enemies slaughtered women and p< caninnies in yet another surpri assault.”

(Cape York To The Kimberley

Rigby Ltd., Adelaide. 28/6.)