The El Questro Story Kimberley
Australian History Memoir Biography Cultural Studies Aviation History Aboriginal Studies Exploration Pioneer Literature
The El Questro Story by Meg Hornabrook is the only authorised biography of the million-acre Kimberley cattle station turned world-famous tourism icon, told through the eyes of the pioneer family who made it happen. First published in 2012, this scarce 1st-edition paperback charts El Questro’s journey from remote 1950s cattle camp to must-do bucket-list destination, weaving in aviation history, Aboriginal rock-art sites, Wyndham township memories and the brutal beauty of the Gibb River region. Collectors prize the title because it was printed in a short run by Bookpod and never re-issued; very-good copies already change hands for double the original cover price.
What lifts the book above a standard station memoir is Hornabrook’s dual perspective: she is both family insider and trained historian, so chapters on surveying the rugged Kimberley ranges, landing the first Cessnas on dirt strips and negotiating flood-outs on the Pentecost River read like adventure fiction, yet are footnoted with archival maps, station diaries and interviews with Bunuba, Ngarinyin and Kija elders. Rock-art custodians share Dreaming stories that overlay the Hornabrook family timeline, giving readers a rare cultural juxtaposition of Aboriginal continuity and European settlement in Australia’s last frontier.
For travellers, historians or collectors of Australiana, owning this first edition means holding a piece of North-West Australia that can no longer be replicated—many of the old homesteads, stock-routes and galleries featured have since been submerged by dam projects or closed to public access. The clean, tightly-bound copy offered here is the ideal reference for planning a Gibb River Road trip, researching Kimberley pioneers or simply curling up with a true story that is as vast, dramatic and unforgettable as the landscape it celebrates.
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