The Gulf Country

Book excerpt: The story of the resilient people who make their home in Australia's far north, from the 'wild time' of the frontier days to the present. 'There is something about the Gulf Country that seems to become part of you.' With its great rivers, grassy plains and mangrove-fringed coastline, Queensland's remote Gulf Country is rich and fertile land. It has long been home to Aboriginal people and, since the 1860s, also to Europeans and to settlers with Chinese, Japanese and Afghan ancestry. Richard J. Martin tells the story of a century-and-a-half of exploration and colonisation, the growth of cattle and mining industries, and the impact of Christian missionaries and Indigenous activism, through to the present day. He acknowledges the brutal realities of violence and dispossession, as well as the challenges of life on the land in northern Australia. Drawing on extensive interviews with people across the Gulf Country, this is a lively and colourful account of tight-knit communities, relationships across cultures and resilience in the face of adversity.