Red Dust Tapes
OVER 55 YEARS AGO multi-award-winning journalist John Francis interviewed ageing Australian Outback characters, before their voices were lost in the red dust.
THIS IS UNIQUE Aussie history.
NEARLY ALL lived largely solitary lives, in the harsh and lonely inland, on the edge of deserts, in a world of searing droughts, and occasional fierce floods.
THEY WERE prospectors, sheep and cattle men, boundary riders, drovers, railway workers, truck drivers, Aboriginal groups, and isolated but hardy women.
AUSTRALIA'S AVIATION HISTORY also started in the red dust. You'll hear interviews with some of Australia's most famous pioneer airmen (many of whom started flying in the First World War), who used aircraft to make the Outback a little less lonely.
JOHN ALSO interviews the descendants of other unique characters, reads fascinating tales from Australia's Outback past, and spins tales of his own red dust adventures.
WEBSITE: www.reddusttapes.au
Red Dust Tapes
The grit-faced bushie who loved a drink, and the thrill of finding floaters
Ned Conroy, the craggy-browed Scotsman with the missing teeth and a dusty face the colour of the red earth he dug in, loved the bush, and the chase for floaters – those bits of gold on the surface – and then the dig-down search for the hidden reef.
And he wasn’t perturbed by the near-miss when, in the pitch black after his lamp snuffed out, several tons of earth collapsed right in front of him.
Or the time when a large snake tumbled down the mine shaft and landed on his shoulder.
When I visited them in 1970, Ned and his mate Banjo were two of the last three prospectors at Darlot, in Western Australia’s northern goldfields, where once there had been something like 5,000 people.
Ned was an alcoholic. He said working remotely in the bush suited him, keeping him on the task of the search for the yellow stuff, and away from the hotels.
Ned talks widely of the joys of life in isolation, the routine of a bushman, the challenges of surviving when you’re not finding much, and the beauty of a harsh landscape.