Hi List Rusheen alerted me to a recently published book "Back on the Wool Track" by the political commentator, Michelle Grattan. Naturally, I raced out and bought a copy. For any of you collecting literature on the West, it's a book well worth having. Grattan first discusses CEW Bean, war historian and journalist, and author of "On the Wool Track" and "Dreadnought of the Darling", both wonderful evocative descriptions of the West in the early twentieth century, which I am sure many of you have read. (If you haven't, borrow them through inter library loan from your local library). Grattan then takes some of the stories and places which Bean visited and visits herself. She give the historical perspective - how Bean saw it - then a modern take - how she sees it today. It's a very interesting and easy read - I zoomed through it. The style is quite different to Bean's - modern reportage uses economical language whereas in the Bean books I could smell and see and imagine the countryside from his descriptions. I wonder why writing styles have changed so much? Also Bean seemed enchanted with the landscape, in much the same way as our own ancestors were enchanted with the West. Grattan's book is far more matter of fact and reflective of the more pragmatic approach to their environment of today's western dwellers perhaps. The poets and adventurers seem to have departed. Contrast Bean: "Man, the raw white man, his sheep and his rabbit were let loose upon a land on which a million years of freedom had stored a great forest of slender Australian shrubs and a great carpet of delicate Australian grass." with Grattan: "With the overwhelming majority of Australia's cotton growing happening in the catchment of the Darling and its tributaries, the sceptics are not convinced and say that country like Bourke should not be used for such a water intensive drop". Somehow Bean captured the essence of the West and its appeal to our forbears. We can see why they made and lost fortunes, and what drove them to inhabit this wild and wonderful place. That magic is somehow missing from Grattan's book. Nevertheless it's a good read and a useful resource visiting many of the towns of the west - Bourke, Brewarrina, Ivanhoe, Wilcannia, White Cliffs, Louth, Broken Hill, Menindee, Mossgiel, Roto - and I'd recommend it for that alone. Also it's a rare look at this once vital region, and the more information we, who have an interest in the area can have access to, the better for us. Cheers, Jill PS If anyone knows the whereabouts of copies of Bean's books, I'd love to buy them.