AustLit

The causes of accidents incurred by railway workers appear much more benign when ingenuity is used to describe the incidents in official reports.

An old coach driver who married late in life sees his hopes for his first-born son realised as the boy reaches adulthood.

An anecdote about how the 'Fighting Parson' dealt with a belligerent shearer.

Describes the kindly and humble nature of the former Anglican Bishop of North Queensland, and his encounters with people in his travels around the district.

Rev. Flynn and another young parson were camped by a bore with a drover for company. Their delicate attempts to curtail the drover's offensive language inflame it instead.

As the Rev. Canon Hurt, Principal of a Charters Towers' boarding school, travels the north and west to speak to parents, he encounters an intoxicated stockman in Camooweal to whom he offers a ride back to his station. The Rev devises a novel way of obliging the stockman to abstain from any more drinking along the drive.

Aplin recounts the humorous manner in which an Anglican priest, Rev. Archie Briggs, related to people, as well as his fame for erecting a huge cross on a Mount Isa hill.

A story of how distance and isolation can sometimes lead to official sanctions and ceremonies being postponed - or forgotten entirely.

Though he hadn't any real education, old Alby had managed to survive by his wits, right into old age. However, he had sometimes pushed his luck a little too far and suffered the consequences.

Aplin tells a story of a heavily pregnant woman living on an isolated property who had to endure a precarious journey being rowed through floodwaters to hospital. He reflects upon the lack of services in, and general neglect by politicians of, northern Australia.

'In the early days of the outback,' says Aplin, 'there was very little coin of the realm', and he describes some of the unusual accounting and trade practises that abounded.

The now derelict Min Min hotel is listed by the Boulia Shire Council as an Historic Site, for it has an interesting past as a Cobb & Co. change house. However, it is also famous for the strange and inexplicable 'Min Min' lights that occur there.

In the early days of European settlement, the isolation of north west Queensland meant that supplies were not regularly available, so housewives had to bake their own bread, and create their own raising agents to do so. However, the imprecision of these methods often led to unpredictable results.

Aplin tells of two young men who travelled from the Northern Territory into Queensland in order to enlist for World War I. They enjoyed a few adventurous days before heading off and though one later returned, the other was killed in France.

The public bar of a country hotel bears witness to some humorous interchanges between locals, and the occasional person passing through on business.

Aplin describes how, in the early days of settlement of the Mount Isa area, bushmen would entertain each other by singing and reciting bush ballads.

A kangaroo shooter is confused in his efforts to understand commissions deducted as a percentage of payment for his skins. In asking a barmaid for help to understand the process, misinterpretation results in a bemusing answer.

When the postmaster decides to have a bit of fun by intervening in the wording of a telegram between two mates, the result is not as funny as he anticipated.

When a group of fishing tourists decide to have a beer at a local pub, the locals decide to have a bit of fun with fishing stories.

A man insists that he will not offer a fencing contractor another job unless he stops bringing his children to assist with the work and sends them to school instead. However, there is a complication for the fencing contractor in fulfilling the condition.