The Australian August 24, 1998

Michael Keenan is a fifth-generation cattle farmer forced by the drought that began in 1994 to move what remained of his starving stock from the family property near Coonabarabran to pastures between Charleville and Roma, in south-west Queensland, nearly 800km north.

Road-trains carried them most of the way, then Keenan had to follow old droving routes hunting for good grass and reliable water. That wasn't the end of it. For his cattle to survive heat, dingoes, illness, disease and theft, Keenan had to stay with them in this semi-wilderness for the best part of two years. There is action galore in his life and, like the bush itself, the deeper one goes into his story the more compelling it becomes.

Keenan writes with passion and a poet's eye for the landscape and loneliness in a country where death can come suddenly and remain undiscovered for months. He draws marvelous characters from rare visits to town and shares riveting and wholly unsettling encounters with cattle duffers - mean, wild, menacing outlaws who would kill a hundred cows just to get the unbranded calves. He is grateful for local advice; "You ride with yer gun, sleep with it and when yer squat behind a tree, you have it in reach."