CALL OF THE OUTBACK: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF ERNESTINE HILL, NOMAD, ADVENTURER AND TRAILBLAZER
Allen & Unwin, $32.99 pb, 320 pp, 9781760290597
CALL OF THE OUTBACK: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF ERNESTINE HILL, NOMAD, ADVENTURER AND TRAILBLAZER by Marianne van Velzen
The long subtitle of this biography says it all. Hill was an immensely popular and influential travel writer in the 1930s and 1940s. Her books The Great Australian Loneliness (1937) and The Territory (1951) gathered together and built on the many stories she had written for city newspapers. She also published histories of the flying doctor medical service (Flying Doctor Calling, 1947) and of the dried fruit industry along the Murray River (Water into Gold, 1937). Her novel based on the life of Matthew Flinders, My Love Must Wait (1941), sold more than 100,000 copies, a record at the time for an Australian-authored book published in Australia.
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