The Overlanders - Mary Seaton - Bog

Based on a true story

The Overlanders is a bittersweet, sometimes comical look at the lives and loves in the world of a droving team in the Australian Outback. Their trials and tribulations and the hardships they endured in the harsh desert country they inhabited. The dangers they faced from their enemies and elements alike. It also tells the story of the women they left behind time and time again to fend for themselves. Sometimes for months on end.
Faced with the task of delivering cattle, sometimes hundreds of head, from point A to point B, sometimes hundreds of miles, the mighty drovers are a mostly unsung hero. In all weathers they pushed the cattle through. In searing heat and freezing cold, through drought and flooding rains they delivered the meat to feed a nation.

Tom was one such a hero, though he would get a good laugh at hearing that said about him. He was a drive boss, and it was on his shoulders, rested the responsibility of delivering live and healthy livestock through the harshest conditions to their destination. It is a myth that these men enjoyed a laid-back stress-free occupation. Yet by the same token they would never entertain the idea of doing anything else.

It was on a shortcut through Devils Canyon that Tom decided to take to save time and money that these men met a most harrowing and horrific foe. It would change their lives forever, and to this day these men are loathe to speak of it.

A foe, so much more than the usual perils they faced as they drove stock across mountain and plain, through deserts and scrub and forests. Much more threatening than the constant search for water and pasture and the threat from rustlers. A foe so confronting that it made these men consider staying at home.

Some happenings are so terrible that they have the power to bind people together in the strongest of bonds. These men came through their ordeal stronger but changed.