Four-Wheel Drive Swagman by Jeff Carter

Four-Wheel Drive Swagman

by Jeff Carter

Rigby, 1973, ISBN 0851790496, colour and black & white photographic plates, two-page photographic title page, illustrated endpapers (maps), hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping edges and corners, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little creasing, rubbing, chipping to edges and corners, a little insect damage along one fold (see photographs)

“Once it was the wandering swagman, tramping the bush tracks, who learned most about the unusual places and people of Australia.  Nowadays it is Jeff Carter, whose specially-equipped vehicle allows him to range Australia from the hopfields of Victoria to the canefields of Queensland; from the opal mines of Coober Pedy to the pearling luggers of Broome.  There’s a mighty lot of country in between, and Jeff Carter has roamed over it with an eye for the offbeat character, incident, or feature, which is as sharp as his own camera lenses.  He tells of people as widely diverse as the late Sir Donald Campbell, streaking across Lake Eyre in the Bluebird, and Charley King, travelling the outback in a tiny caravan towed by a donkey-team.  Jeff and his wife were enthralled witnesses of cattle-musters, charcoal-burning, opal-gouging, insect-eating plants, limpet-eating starfish, and man-eating leeches.  They ventured into caves decorated with Aboriginal paintings “half as old as time” and plunged abruptly back into modern life when they saw a new town being built from the ground up at Mount Tome Price.  Their four-wheel drive vehicle took them from the mountains of the south to the deserts of the north, along the lonely Gunbarrel Highway, into the booming northwest and back again.”

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