Carl Warburton's Buffaloes: Adventures in Arnhem Land

In the 1920¿s, Kakadu in Australia¿s Top End was the domain of the buffalo-shooter. These frontiersmen came to the north seeking adventures and fortune beyond the borders of white settlement, in a land that was wild, hostile and still governed by its traditional Aboriginal owners ¿ the Gagudju. Originally published in 1934, Carl Warburton¿s Buffaloes is a memoir of the exploits of two ex-Gallipoli veterans who, unable to return to an ordinary life at home, journeyed north to procure buffalo hides from the wetlands and plains of what is now Kakadu National Park. This is a laconic and engaging story of 'mad adventure¿, mateship and survival that captures the high action and extreme dangers of shooting buffalo from horseback. A classic example of early twentieth-century Australian frontier literature, Buffaloes takes us to the fringes of the Northern Territory economy and into the zone of contact between white and black Australians. It offers a valuable account of an Aboriginal society in a state of transition, and expresses the dreams and delusions of those white pioneers who sought to exploit and domesticate Australia¿s last frontier.