​These are first-hand experiences that have given me pause for thought.
 
I glimpsed the grim reality of war one quiet morning at Bogghi Bend on the Darling River near Bourke. For a brief moment, the 86-year-old veteran sitting opposite me melted into an 18-year-old-boy back in the Jordan Valley in Palestine fighting furiously side by side with men of the Australian Camel Corps, desperately thrusting his bayonet into the teeming ranks of Turks pouring over their trenches.
 
Private Harold Smith shook violently and tears coursed down his cheeks as he recalled the sheer terror of those repeated bayonet charges. Eight decades after the slaughter of World War One had ceased, 10,000 kms away in the Australian Outback, the nightmare still made an old man shudder and weep.

Yousif is a rare individual. He’s a refugee from Sudan in East Africa, a Fine Arts graduate, a trauma counsellor, and a recordist who has worked with Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. Brutal wars and starvation have displaced over 12 million Sudanese in recent years and Yousif’s family were among those who escaped to Australia.
 
He credits Australian missionaries who came to the Numa Mountains in the South of his country in the early 20th century with restoring the faith that had first came to Nubia on the Nile River nearly 2000 years ago. They brought progress and change to a region long troubled by extreme violence and grave human rights violations. They established the education facilities, medical care and brought technical advances that gave him a start.
 
Now he is returning the favour. With Global Recording Network, he’s been audio-taping stories from the biblical narrative for the Arande people near Alice Springs and in the Yolngu Matha language on Elcho Island. He’s also delivering trauma counselling both here in Australia and for the people of his war-torn homeland.
 
It’s remarkable that the venture of those Australians to bring the Gospel to Africa nearly a century ago has boomeranged. Rising teenage sprint star Gout Gout is a South Sudanese Christian like Yousif. I think their proactive faith is reminding Australians of the valuable gift they received from missionaries who sacrificed so much to bring it to them.   

You know you’re living in The Land of the Long Weekend when you have a holiday called Labour Day! The old saying that ‘Aussies have a great facility for knocking off’ just isn’t true any longer – statistics say we work longer than almost anywhere in the world. So why celebrate the 8-Hour-Day?
 
Melbourne stonemasons were among the first in the world to achieve the 8-hour-working day after they walked off the job in April 1856 and the ripple spread across the whole country. These colonial block layers laid the foundations for one of the strongest trade union movements on the planet making the impossible dream of 'eight hours labour, eight hours rest, and eight hours recreation' a reality.
 
The victory was achieved without a reduction in pay or violence. These colonials set an international precedent, demonstrating that workers could achieve improved conditions through organized action. 

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Bourke has generated remarkable stories from its very beginning. Over the space of forty years, my eyes have grown wider and wider as I’ve met and read about the people who’ve lived on the red Western Plains of my home state. They’ve taught me lots about Australia and myself.
 
I’ve been inspired watching Stanley and Lucy Drummond driving prodigious distances to gather crippled or blinded kids living in isolation to take them to Sydney for treatment and a beach holiday. Then seeing the way their infectious faith prompted former stage coach driver Sid Coleman to learn to fly and buy a plane to put wings under their dream of air ambulances lifted my spirits. And what about the visionary couple’s audacity in recruiting barnstorming aviatrix Nancy Bird to pilot nurses out to remote outback villages in her Gipsy Moth bi-plane?
 
Extraordinary!
 
That’s just a couple of the twenty-five stories I’ve gathered into this collection. I love the humility and simplicity of these people who quietly got on painting heroic deeds on the vast canvas that stretches beyond Bourke. I’ve felt honoured to tell their stories and hope they find a place in your heart and imagination too.
 
There’s a local saying that “Once you’ve crossed the North Bourke Bridge you’ll come back.”
This is only a handful of Bourke yarns – there’s a heap more waiting to be told sometime soon.
‘Bourke and Beyond’ can be purchased from the Back o’ Bourke Exhibition Centre or on The Outback Historian website.

Some friends dropped by this week and they pressed my buttons when we got talking about the power of connecting story to place. I was fascinated watching their faces animate as they told me how stories worn thin by familiarity took on new depth and meaning when they visited locations where the action had taken place. 
 
And that was only a virtual trip on screen! 
 
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of pilgrimage ever since I began road-testing The Poets Trek on red dirt roads at the back of Bourke thirty years ago. We were exploring ways to expand tourism and seized on an idea I’d experimented with when teaching kids at Pera Bore School. It was simply reading, acting out and filming the poems and stories the famous author Henry Lawson had composed in 1893 ‘on location’ around the Western Plains. I was excited when I saw the way flat words on the page leapt to life as imagination took a hold in the landscape Henry had walked. 
 
The kid’s dubbed it ‘Uncle Paul’s Outback Adventure’!

Preacher, author, activist and prodigious inventor, David Unaipon was a remarkable Australian. He braved the ignorance and prejudice of White Australia and, for decades in his quiet, scholarly, courtly way, he preached his truth and pursued an astonishing sweep of interests.
                                                                                                                                     Mark McGuinness

How did the gentle face of David, son of James and Nymbulda Unaipon of the Narrinyeri people, come to smile at thousands of Australians from the $50 note they swap daily at shop counters? How did an Aboriginal boy, educated in a humble mission school at the mouth of the Murray River around 150 years ago, come to be compared to one of the Western world’s greatest geniuses - Leonardo da Vinci?

PART 2 of the  Saga of Henrietta Foott
Henrietta and James Foott must have begun 1864 full of optimism. Assisted by Aboriginal people, they had hewn out a station just south of Bourke that was a far cry from their early life half a world away. In Ireland, James had dined on Queen Anne plates imported from China, using silverware etched with his family crest. Henrietta’s distinguished family in Scotland had guaranteed her a good education.
 
James had squandered his inheritance and sailed to Australia with Henrietta in 1853 looking for a fresh start. Their great grand-daughter Bethia pictured James’ pioneering toil. “ … he dug with his spade, and cut with his axe. His land cleared, his saplings split, his bark stripped, his homestead built, it was not enough that he bought and bred and fed and watered his sheep. He worked hard, and thought that his hands had brought a life of security for his wife and for his children.”
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The  Darling in flood, sketch by Henrietta Foott

​Women alone in the Bush,
Mothers and wives,
Keeping your guard in the weird night-hush
Over sleeping lives;
In woe or weal,
Staunch and fond,
True as steel
To the marriage bond…
Hearts of Gold, O Hearts of Gold!
                                                          (Will Oglivie 1896)          
 
Scots stockman/poet, Will Ogilvie, witnessed first-hand the heroic fortitude of the women who braved the punishing conditions of the lonely West. He admired the exceptional resourcefulness it took survive without schools, shops, churches, hospitals and post offices.
 
Scotswoman Henrietta Foott arrived near the site of Fort Bourke on the banks of the Darling in October 1860. The record of her ten-year stint in the Outback is a remarkable story of a girl raised in a comfortable home in Aberdeen, transforming into a frontier woman capable of keeping her family in a rough camp 800 km from civilisation. Without question, her sturdy faith was the backbone of the family.

LIST OF STORIES ON THE OUTBACK HISTORIAN WEBSITE
This list of stories will continue to be updated.  Included are the names of the particular characters, the story title, the date of publication and categories related to the story. The quickest way to find a particular story on the website is to go to the Archives to find the month it was published or to the Categories.
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ARNOLD, Thomas THE HEADMASTER WHO LIT THE OYMPIC FLAME, August 2024, Sport
ARNOTT, William AUSTRALIA’S BISCUIT KING, July 2024, Business, Pastoral Care, Philanthropy
BOOTH, Brian IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME, June 2023, Sport
BOREHAM, Frank A TALE OF TWO STORYTELLERS, February 2024, Storytelling, The Arts
COOPER, William  A BRIGHT LIGHT IN DARK DAYS, February 2025, Indigenous, Leadership
DALBY, Mary Anne ‘THE PEOPLE’S FRIEND’, July 2024, Pastoral Care, Social Services
DELACOUR DE LABILLIERE, Madelaine Rose MORE THAN MILLS & BOON, March 2025,  Bush Services
GRIBBLE, John WARANGESDA, CAMP OF MERCY, March 2025, Indigenous   
HASSALL, Thomas PIONEER EDUCATOR, February 2023, New Colony, Education, Pastoral Care
JOHNSON, Richard A GRATEFUL START, February 2023    New Colony, Education, Pastoral Care
JONES, Fletcher THE HOUSE THAT QUALITY BUILT, March 2024,  Business, Philanthropy, For Schools
LAWRY, Mary  A BRAVE AUSTRALIAN GIRL, January 2025, New Colony, Social Services
LIDDELL, Eric THE FLYING SCOTSMAN, July 2024, Sport
MCKAY, Hugh, Victor YOUNG AUSTRALIANS WITH BIG IDEAS, April 2024,  Invention, Philanthropy
McILVEEN, Arthur THE SALVO AT TOBRUK,  Anzac Day
MATTHEWS, Daniel ‘MR MALOGA’ March 2023, Indigenous
MORT, Thomas SIR THOMAS AND SIR BOB FEED THE WORLD, May 2023,  Invention, Philanthropy
NICHOLLS, Doug  AN AFL CHAMPION,  May 2023,  Indigenous, Pastoral Care, Politics
NICHOLLS, Doug and Gladys  A COMPELLING DOUBLE ACT, May 2022, Indigenous, Pastoral Care
PARKES, Henry ONE PEOPLE, ONE DESTINY, March 23, Politics
REIBEY, Mary  THE WILD COLONIAL GIRL, September 22,  New Colony, Entrepreneur                          
REID, Bill  BILL REID’S HALF FORGOTTEN MUSIC,  January 24, Indigenous, Pastoral Care
RIDLEY, John YOUNG AUSTRALIANS WITH BIG IDEAS, April 24 , Invention, Philanthropy
WALKER, Alan  SIXTY YEARS OF COUNSEL,  March 23,Pastoral Care, Social Services
WALKER,  Alan  THE WIND IN THE GUM TREE, August 22   Pastoral Care, Social Services
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