Frontier Territory

The colourful history of Northern Australia

by Glenville Pike

Adventure Publications, c1980s [Third Printing], ISBN 095957381X, full colour and black and white photographs throughout, black and white photographic end papers, illustrated frontispiece, hardcover with illustrated laminated boards

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, minor rubbing and bumping to edges, corners and covers, no inscriptions, laminate lifting in places (see photographs)

“This is the history of the Northern Territory – one of the last of the world’s Frontier Lands.  But it is no dull historical record, for the Northern Territory of Australia was always a colourful, exciting place, and this is the story of its exploration and development.  A tragic story in many ways, but through it all runs the courage of the pioneers – the men and women who overcame disaster and privation, and risked, and sometimes gave their lives to bring this vast untamed land through years of neglect onto the threshold of its present day prosperity – a land only now, after one hundred years of pioneering entering upon its destiny.
The Territory was as much a frontier as was the better known American West of the same period.  We too, had our “covered wagon” days, the movement of great herds of cattle across two thousand miles of unsettled wilderness: vast cattle “spreads” as large as Wales or Belgium – properties that were literally bought with the blood of the pioneers, for in the Aboriginal tribes that ruled this wilderness they struck savage, implacable foes.
The Northern Territory was a frontier in pioneering and its was a frontier in war.  Its role in either sphere is little known by the rest of Australia, and unknown Overseas.  But it is a story that cannot fail to stir the imagination.”