Battling the Land: 200 Years of Rural Australia

This is the story of rural Australians-their achievements, their setbacks and victories, the forces they must contend with and the rewards, so seldom material, for which they strive. It is a story told against the backdrop of 200 years of Australian history, a history to which they have contributed so much. Farmers, graziers, miners, drovers, townspeople, merchants, battlers and bosses-these and many others fill the pages of Battling the Land. They create the grand themes which this book reveals-exploring, settling, developing, innovating, coming to terms with the vastness which is Australia beyond the big cities, persevering, and learning to share with the original inhabitants. Their lives reveal the remarkable and too little acknowledged diversity of rural life, and the variety of responses to the endless challenge of life on the land. This is the Australia behind the city-created myths, the country as it has changed through generations of men and women on the land. From the moment the First Fleet anchored in a lonely cove to the beginning of a new millennium, from the Northwest Cape to the forests of southern Tasmania, this is the story of rural Australia-and the people who make it.