New Double CD. Sixty years ago Walkabout - Australia’s first Geographical Magazine - published a series of stories about cattle droving in the Australian outback.  These quickly became classics.

Four feature length stories have been retold, this time as a double CD audio magazine titled, “Days of the Drover”. Stories by great Australian authors Alan Marshall, George Farwell and Arthur Upfield have been chosen.  They take listeners from Rocklands Station on the Diamantina River along the Birdsville Track to the rail head at Marree.  These are accurate historical records that remind us that Australia’s drovers were the world’s best. 

“Andy and Jack are the lads of the bush, fearing nothing on legs and good mouth-organists.” 

Included as a bonus, is a classic and intriguing account of early operations by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This was written in 1936 by Dr George Simpson medical advisor to the Rev John Flynn. 

As today’s travellers speed through this country in air-conditioned comfort these stories become stark reminders of the isolation and hardships faced by the bands of tough, rugged men who slowly pushed mobs of cattle across the country long before the era of the road train and the 4WD. 

“There is no finer sight than a mob of horses drinking at a river with a sunset sky behind them. And these horses were aristocrats; there was breeding in every line of them.”    

“Days of the Drover” is read by Australian actor Peter Curtin and features more than two hours of listening enjoyment.  These stories were first published in the 1930s and 40s in the pages of Walkabout bringing first hand accounts of remote outback life to urban readers.

In the 1890s, when a woman's role was seen as marrying well and raising a family, Daisy Bates reinvented herself from humble governess to heiress-traveller and 'woman of science'. She would become one of the best-known and most controversial ethnologists in history, and one of the first people to put Aboriginal culture on the map. Born into tough circumstances, Daisy's prospects were dim; her father an alcoholic bootmaker, her mother dying of consumption when Daisy was only four years old. Through sheer strength of will, young Daisy overcame her miserable start, and in 1883 she migrated to Australia with a boatload of orphans, passing herself off as an heiress who taught for fun. Marriage followed - first with the young Breaker Morant, then bigamously with two other husbands. For decades she led a double life. But who was the real Daisy Bates? While other biographies have presented her as a saint, historian Susanna de Vries gives readers a more complex portrait of the 'Queen of the Never Never'.

Diamonds & Dust - CD

In 1860, an eccentric Irish police officer named Robert OHara Burke led a cavalcade of camels, wagons and men out of Melbourne. Accompanied by William Wills, a shy English scientist, he was prepared to risk everything to become the first European to cross the Australian continent.

A few months later, an ancient coolibah tree at Cooper Creek bore a strange carving: 'Dig Under 3ft NW'. Burke, Wills and five other men were dead. The expedition had become an astonishing tragedy.

Sarah Murgatroyd reveals new historical and scientific evidence to tell the story of the disaster with all its heroism and romance, its discoveries, coincidences and lost opportunities. A spell-binding book.