Tackling the Distance

In the years we lived in Bourke,  we often heard warm praise  from the locals for the Bush Brothers.  They were an Anglican order, begun around  1900, which mobilised young men from Oxford University to tackle the tyranny of distance in the Outback.  The first Australian recruit, 21 year old John Dent Martyn, caught my attention with his enthusiasm.   Here is a snatch from his diary.

“The old Lizzie in which I have to travel is   quite a specimen for the Museum. It is six years old, has done 76,000 miles, has been up two trees, has torpedoed one cow, has had the chassis snapped, has been bogged, I might say, hundreds of times! I have just got in tonight from a 150 mile trip. That is the shortest  trip I have to do…Who wouldn’t be a Bush Brother? This district is half the size of England and just as large as the whole of Victoria."    
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 LISTEN as Paul tells  more of Brother John's story.