Frontier lands and pioneer legends : how pastoralists gained Karuwali land / Pamela Lukin Watson

"Frontier Lands and Pioneer Legends" presents reports from the frontier, the memoirs of five pioneering families who in the 1860s 'opened up' part of the Channel Country in southwest Queensland, an area of spinifex and sandhill country the size of Belgium. The writers of these memoirs had much in common: the three male writers were contemporaries; two families were blood relatives; each owned sequentially one or more of the properties owned by other members of the five. And yet a careful reading of these first hand accounts of life on the pastoral frontier reveal startling differences in how the pioneering experience is portrayed. Some present a conventional picture: brave and enterprising pioneers struggling against nature, their hard work in harsh conditions benefitting those who came after. But in some, darker elements come to the surface... Which version is the more valid? Here is Australia's remembered past at its most accessible: intriguing characters, both white and black, and a topical issue enlivened by a fresh approach.