Lightning Ridge: The Land of Black Opals

In good condition - has markings from use - has no dust jacket - due to differing weights in books, postage maybe adjusted at checkout.

But for the promptings of a mate on the opal fields of Lightning Ridge, Australia's greatest story teller might well have remained one of the anonymous host of roving adventurers who have pioneered the little known corners of this continent. Urged by a fellow opal-seeker, he began to write - and wrote his way to fame.

In Lightning Ridge Ion Idriess tells of his beginnings of his childhood in Lismore and Tamworth and Broken Hill, of his apprenticeship in bushcraft, and of the growing love for the Australian outback which illumines all his work. He tells of the jobs he had - as rouseabout, horse breaker, horse tailer, shearer - and of how his wanderings brought him to the opal mines at Lightning Ridge. The romance of opals, with their fiery beauty, captured the author's imagination - and has held it ever since. He became one of the band of opal-seekers who live in these pages, sharing their heartbreaks and their sudden wild exultations. And the stories he tells of his mates are little gems in themselves, vivid in characterization, rich in sympathy and understanding.

As a key to the author's background and philosophy, to his oneness with the Australia he has brilliantly portrayed, Lightning Ridge is a document of no small interest. But is is above all a book with a story to it, a book for all who love adventure and the bush.