The Kimberly is no longer beyond the reach of ordinary tourists, yet it will perhaps always retain the tang of our pioneering days. It is the country of the great cattle drives that opened up the land, of the devil-may-care days when Broome was the bustling pearl centre of the world, of the dashed hopes of the goldrusher, of a time when things happened 'between whites and blacks that nobody will ever know about'.

But this book is far more than a historical account. It is about the people of the Kimberley, the quickquidders, the loners, the pearlers, the cattle people, the old and new pathfinders, the Aborigines, the clerical roundsmen, the natural boozers, and the modern day mining centurions. They are evoked in all their humour and verve.

And throughout the whole narrative is thread the presences of those two living essences of the Kimberley, the bull and the boab, that 'Caliban of a tree' which seems, like the people themselves before the Wet breaks, so possessed by the imp of zaniness.

Athol Thomas is a well known journalist based in Perth, and is the president of the Perth Press Club. He was born in Beverley in Western Australia, in 1924, and studied arts at the University of Western Australia before turning to writing for a living. He has published a number of short stories and in 1956 won the inaugural national award, the Walkley Award, for feature writing. When he is not writing a column or a travel feature story for his newspaper, the West Australian, he can usually be found fishing.