"Australia on Horseback" Topic

If you're looking for a fresh, easy intro to colonial Australia this new popular history by journalist and war correspondent Cameron forbes might be it. It's in the same literary league as Peter Fitzsimmons' output: light, narrative history by a non-academic writer.

All the same, for the critically minded it's probably at least a notch or two above the 1960s and 70s writings of Holthouse and Pike in terms of objectivity and sobriety – and has a wider geographical span than their Queensland-centric efforts.

A quick scan of the bibliography demonstrates the author's acquaintance with all the standard and general works on the subjects that feature in his narrative thread; some of which, in fact, have only the most tenuous equestrian connection.

You get a pretty good one volume summary of exploration, settlement, frontier conflict, and bushranging. You won't get a fine-grained analysis, but it's a good starting point to whet the historicist appetite.

I have to admit that the above post was based on a skim read of the relevant sections at the retailer. I did the same again, but this time read the frontier conflict chapters more closely, and was less impressed: some sloppy quoting likely (designed?) to create a false impression, and 'Perry rifles' (meaning Terry carbines) being a couple of flaws.

Also, where at one point the author sensibly suggests that the Aboriginal fatalities at 'The Battle of Carbucky' would be somewhere between the improbable 'one' of the official report and the equally unlikely 'one hundred' of a non-participant station employee, elsewhere in the book he appears to take at face value an Aboriginal oral account of the killing of eight stockmen in an ambush by three tribesmen seemingly armed only with traditional weapons; an event that sounds implausible to begin with, and which would certainly have become known to the settlers and passed down to us, but is new to me.