Can you suggest books about the Australian Outback?
December 18, 2021 9:22 PM   Subscribe

I just finished watching RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service), a drama series about the RFDS, and I was so intrigued by the glimpses of life in the Outback. I knew it was sparsely-populated, but I had no idea that it has a quarter the population density of Alaska, or that Wyoming has 200x the population density of the Outback. I want to know more!

Happy to read either fiction or non-fiction, but would like to know a lot more about a) the region and its history and geography and environment and b) the lives of people who live there. I don't mind reading about human struggle (and I imagine there's a lot of human struggle in the Outback!), but I'd prefer not to read a novel that reaches for Being Serious And Literary by making the entire book about How Many Disasters Can Happen To This One Family In 300 Pages.

It doesn't actually have to be books, either; I'd read articles or blogs or whatever!
posted by Eyebrows McGee to Writing & Language (22 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Two old novels by Nevil Shute, with most of their action in the Outback: Beyond the Black Stump and The Far Country.
posted by Rash at 9:37 PM on December 18, 2021 [3 favorites]


Tracks by Robyn Davidson.

Blurb: The internationally acclaimed account of Robyn Davidson’s epic journey across seventeen thousand miles of Australian desert and bush with four camels and a dog.

Follow-up interview with the author/adventurer 40 years later.
posted by lulu68 at 10:04 PM on December 18, 2021 [3 favorites]


A little out of left field, but I the first thing that comes to mind is Murnane's The Plains.
posted by kickingtheground at 10:18 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]


The Dig Tree by Sarah Murgatroyd is about the Burke and Willis expedition team and it is an amazing tale.
posted by Arctostaphylos at 10:22 PM on December 18, 2021


I follow 10Deserts blog here and here, via twitter. I hope I can go there one winter.

Try and find the film Alone Across Australia, self-supported, mostly self-filmed afaik..

Read Dark Emu by Bruce Mason; archaeology, fire, horticulture, colonisation. A lot of people going to great lengths to debunk so ymmv.

And yes, Tracks .. it's the sort of book that makes one want to move, and experience.
posted by unearthed at 11:05 PM on December 18, 2021


Jane Harper writes excellent mysteries that take place there. I like The Dry and The Lost Man, but they’re all pretty entertaining.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:10 AM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]


A Town Like Alice (more Nevil Shute) is fiction set in the outback. Watching this thread as hoping someone will recommend some books by Indigenous authors. And not to nitpick but isn't The Dry set in rural Victoria, not the outback?
posted by emd3737 at 12:27 AM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


Marina Abramovic’s memoir “Walk Through Walls” has a moving chapter describing her experiences in the Outback.
posted by lasagnaboy at 1:08 AM on December 19, 2021


Fiction:
Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

Memoir:
A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man by Ender Baskan.

Non-Fiction:
Journey to Horseshoe Bend by T.G.H. Strehlow.
posted by Thella at 1:27 AM on December 19, 2021


Annabelle Brayley. I've just audioed Our Vietnam Nurses at least one of whom goes back to the Queensland bush after her tour. I haven't read Bush Nurses or Nurses of the Outback.
A bit of Banjo Patterson? The Man From IronBark.
♬♫♩♪The Cocky at Bungaree Gordon Bok. And Now I'm Easy Eric Bogle.
And I guess Walkabout either the book or Nicholas Roeg's 1971 film.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:34 AM on December 19, 2021


Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, which has also been made into a movie called Rabbit Proof Fence.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 2:32 AM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


Tracks also has a good film adaptation.
posted by threecheesetrees at 3:15 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


The Road from Coorain, an autobiography by Jill Ker Conway
posted by pangolin party at 5:34 AM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]


I watched the first season of the reality series, Outback Truckers (available on Netflix). Parts of the show can drag a bit, but I loved the thread with trucker Steve Grahame, who gets his rig stuck in mud in the middle of nowhere and has a lot of trouble getting his truck freed so he can deliver much-needed supplies to a small, remote village.

I'm also fond of photographs of the Outback. The New York Times had an article about photographer Adam Ferguson (the article included some excellent photos). That article is behind a paywall, but you can see some of his photographs here and here.

Upon edit: I see you're specifically looking for books, but I hope some of the material above might be of interest anyway.
posted by alex1965 at 6:38 AM on December 19, 2021


Seconding Tracks.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:58 AM on December 19, 2021


I recently read and enjoyed "Dust Off the Bones by Paul Howarth, set in the 19th century. I also really like, and have reread, Tim Winton's "Dirt Music".

As an aside, if you wanted to search beyond what is mentioned here, "Outback books"/"Outback literature" are googleable terms, taking you to lots and lots of lists that people have made (generally seeming to duplicate much of what is already suggested above, obviously).
posted by Dip Flash at 7:00 AM on December 19, 2021


When I was a kid I came across a coffee table photo book called From Alice to Ocean, which is full of incredible photos of the Outback. The beauty of the photos really stuck with me. Reading this thread, I now realize that the book is a photo-focused companion to Tracks, and was part of the same trip across the Outback by Robyn Davidson. It looks like it may be out of print now, but it looks like there are used copies on Amazon for $10 or less.
posted by Mid at 8:16 AM on December 19, 2021


It's entirely second hand, but the sources cited by The Dollop podcast might be worth a look. It's an American history podcast with a large Australian following that has done a number of Australian history shows.

Suggest episodes that are on topic:
110 - Burke and Wills
298 - Lasseter's Reef
302 - Hume and Hovell

White guys stumbling around the outback that aren't really exploring:
114 - Alexander Pierce (includes rather a lot of murder and cannibalism)
366- Pilot Hans Bertram

Australians exploring south of Australia:
102 - Alfred Lawson
207 - The Animal Horror of Macquarie Island (includes tens of millions of dead cute animals)

I haven't read any of the sources except half of one of the Lawson books. (It wasn't terrible, just devoted to the great men of history in a way I personally found tedious.)

I also recommend the podcast if that's of interest. The hosts are smarter and more thoughtful about politics and social issues than most professional comedians, but they can also be kind of obnoxious. It gets better as the years go on. Mostly. Almost anything live featuring guest hosts Will Anderson, Celia Pacquola, or Justin Hamilton will be about weird Australian history.
posted by eotvos at 11:07 AM on December 19, 2021


The Dry by Jane Harper. A murder mystery set in a small outback town. Not the most twisty of murder mysteries but OK, but the people, the town and the country and how it can change feature prominently. As someone that lived in a small country town a lot of it rang very true.

If you're OK with the idea of rural life in a coastal area I might also Suggest Storm Boy by Colin Thiele, there are also 2 movies of the book, both are very good but the one from my childhood that has my heart is the 1970s version, but I think the 2019 version is easier to find in the USA on streaming.
posted by wwax at 5:41 PM on December 19, 2021


The podcast Larrimah, by The Australian newspaper, is really worth a listen. It's about a man who went missing after getting into a number of disputes with people in the local area, but it's also about outback life (non-Aboriginal, in this case).

If you up can access it (it's on SBS here in Australia but I'm not sure if that is watchable overseas) Warwick Thornton, an Aboriginal director, made a documentary about his temporary return to outback life called The Beach. It's fantastic!
posted by jojobobo at 7:03 PM on December 19, 2021


Not a book or a blog or an article, but you might enjoy the four 25-min episodes of Bush Mechanics (2001), a quirky docudrama series filmed in and around Yuendumu in the Northern Territory and available on YouTube.
posted by trotzdem_kunst at 10:42 PM on December 19, 2021




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