"Territory "

Another Lockwood Opus On The "Territory "

Douglas Lockwood, pri

winning corespondent in Dar

of the Melbourne Herald for past 23 years, has been turn books out regularly since Crocodiles and Other People peared in 1959.

ALL of them have been Australia’s Northern Terrih the vast, thirsty, lonely, un< populated and largely trackless panse, whose chief industry cattle-raising and whose second probably tourism.

It is for the benefit of the m tourists who now pour into the 1 ritory that Lockwood has written latest book Up The Track.

Lockwood, himself, describes as “a travel-book-with-a-differe about it,” but he doesn’t specify w it is different from. To this revie\ it bears a striking resemblance some of the more garrulous eff< of Frank Clune.

Ayers Rock

Some of the more outrage examples of Lockwoodian garru should never have been allowed appear in print. Here are two s examples from his pages on Aj Rock, the enormous monolith v a circumference of miles am height of 1,143 ft, which rears of the desert south-west of A Springs: • Estimates of its age vary fr five hundred million to a thousi million years. That was before time, so I can’t say. • (I was) spellbound by 1 pyramid of God’s which dwar the Pharaohs’ at Cheops ... so that it flattered middle-aged won —they looked young beside it— huge that fat women seemed slim As with dune’s books (wh contain plenty of “meat” despite garrulities), Up The Track will i doubtedly sell well to the mt Australians who have been, going, or would like to go to Northern Territory.

It is a mine of information £ stories about the Territory’s peo and places, if you can only put with the Lockwood style.—RL (UP THE TRACK. Rigby Limii 30/-.)