Horsemen of the Outback

Don Corcoran

This is an extremely well researched work which will be treasured by all horse riders. It is a very thorough account of Australian spurs and the bush blacksmiths like Fred Gutte who designed his on Wave Hill Station, but it is much more than that. It offers a romantic folklore of the horsemen who used the spurs in their sometimes dangerous and often lonely rides on the cattle stations between outback Queensland and the Kimberley. This book is rightly dedicated to boss drover Edna Zigenbine and ringer Mick Bower. It also contains stories of drovers George Booth, Kelly Dixon, Ray Macnamara, Jack Sammon, Rodney Watson, Pic Willetts, ringers Frank Bunyan, Rob Dempster, Roy Hulbert, Ian Kelly, Thorpe McConville’s ‘Wild Australia’ and a host of other great horsemen of the Australian outback. Don Corcoran is to be congratulated on the years of work he has put into his research. There are more than three hundred historic photos in this book and they are full of nostalgia for the way outback Australia used to be. This will be a reference book for decades to come.