Young in a Wild Place

Jacqueline Knox

A personal look at life in the back-blocks of north-west Australia, largely the Kimberleys, and particularly Broome and Derby, this memoir starts with the author’s arrival in the Broome area as a baby and her story is inextricably tied to the story of the development of the post-war Kimberleys. From her father’s station management (and her own early links with local Aboriginal identities as an isolated station child) and later various small businesses in town, through her mother’s push for multicultural tourism after the pearl industry died, the politics of a modern Broome emerging, the author’s own station work, rodeo competition, single motherhood, riding school, work in the fledgling oil industry and her father’s business, marriage and the hardships of managing a small station, more kids, extraordinary stories of bush isolation, marriage breakup, to re-training in adult education and working in the rodeos, working on the establishment of Derby TAFE and subsequently managing it, overseeing the early emergence of art training that led to the establishment of the internationally acclaimed Mowanjum Arts movement, this is the story of an extraordinarily ordinary Australian woman in post-war north-west Australia.