SAILOR ON THE TRACK

Illustrated throughout with photographs, maps and line-drawings.

Sailor on the Track collects the stories of John Nicholes which were originally published separately in the 1960s in popular magazines. Nicholes left the sea in the 1935 and for the next twelve years worked around the outback – in sideshows, cutting prickly pear, fencing, wool-pressing, timber cutting, scrub-clearing – doing any job that came to hand. He was for some time dingo trapper for Barcoo Shire.

The book is full of the characters, animal and human, of the west. There are publicans and graziers, boundary riders and scrub-runners, trappers and shearers and amateur jockeys, but there are also paddock dogs and dingoes, buckjumpers and steady horses, wild cattle and a confused pig.