Red Dust Rising

Marion Houldsworth

This is the inspiring story of a northern cattleman who built up the Urapunga cattle station from nothing. From the 1950s to the 1990s, he lived rough and worked hard. He worked closely with the tribal Aborigines, made Urapunga a dry station, coped with the many crocodiles in the Roper River, fought against cattle diseases, hunted buffalo, built himself a homestead and survived. Ray Fryer says of himself, “I always admired those old-time pioneers, the Duracks and the Buchanans. I wanted to do something like them; something worthwhile.” So, when the government resumed the Fryer property for an army training reserve, Ray threw his swag into the back of his truck and headed off to the Northern Territory.
This is is the story of Ray’s ‘making something worthwile’ of Urapunga, a run-down property on the Roper River. After years of ‘reaching up to touch bottom’, rough living and hard work, of learning to live in harmony with the tribal Aborigines, of coping with crocodiles in the rivers, diseases among his stock, and of being cut off in the Wet for months at a time, he could at last begin to feel he was ‘getting his head above water’. Then came the cattle crash of the 1970s. How Ray faced and overcame this challenge and succeeded in making Urapunga a valuable property is part of this gripping story of a man pitting physical strength, integrity and principles, against the odds.
Told with humour in Ray Fryer’s own words, this is a great yarn.
With a foreword by Les Hiddins ‘Bush Tucker Man’.