Four Wheel Drive
A Lifetime in the Bush
The biography of Len Beadell
Review:
Lifetime in the Bush is Mark Shephard's biography
of Australian legend Len Beadell.
Mark became hooked on his subject after attending one his
lectures in 1988 and then participating in a four wheel drive safari
to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the completion of the
Gunbarrel Highway.
In fact everyone who ever met Len Beadell seems
to have become hooked, evidenced by the number of
fond reminiscences reproduced in the book.
This is a biography so it does not reproduce the contents of the
books
for which Len Beadell himself is so well known.
The events in the construction of the outback roads
that those books are based around are chronicled in note form
in Chapter 5. What we get is the context, the brackets
around those events, starting with his grand-parents, school, scouting
sowing the seeds of the surveying bug, the war,
and the story behind the bomb roads
(which Beadell wrote less about),
four wheel drive touring, his legacy,
and the man, family and friends.
The appendix will be invaluable to a historically minded
traveller and contains the dates and positions of Beadell's
sign-posts, the dates of construction of each road,
road distances, and positions for the Woomera rocket range.
A Life in the Bush:
- Foreword by Dick Smith
- Introduction
- Ch 1 Grassroots
- Ch 2 School, Scouts and Surveying
- Ch 3 A Call to Duty
- Ch 4 Territory Tales
- Ch 5 Piecing Together the Jigsaw
- Ch 6 Far Too Long in the Bush
- Ch 7 The Gunbarrel Road Construction Party
- Ch 8 Desert Life Takes its Toll
- Ch 9 A Writing Frenzy
- Ch 10 The Consumate Tour Guide
- Ch 11 Beadell Family Desert Trips
- Ch 12 Further Recollections of a Gentle Giant
- Ch 13 Milestones
- Ch 14 Len's Memory Lives On
- Appendix Fact File on Len's Roads
Available 19 June 1998,
from bookshops in paperback for $29.95(au),
or in hardback for $39.95+$5pp direct from
Corkwood Press
only.
|
A rough count reveals over 110 illustrations -
photographs, drawings, painting and maps.
Many are in colour.
The drawings and paintings are welcome
because Len Beadell was a gifted cartoonist
cum caricaturist.
The quality of reproduction is very high,
even down to a separate dust-jacket (above right)
for the paperback edition.
The bad news is that if you are a student
of Len Beadell's roads or recent Australian outback history,
you are going to have to buy it.
- Larry Stanley
- 4wd.sofcom.com/4WD.html
Go to
Len Beadell's books,
other 4WD books
and
Australian
pages
