BOSS DROVER

AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE Biography Aborigines –

Popular account of life of Matt Savage, brief references to Aborigines throughout.

First Edition.

• 169 p. illus., maps (on lining papers), ports. 23 cm.
• First Nations (AIATSIS) Subject:
  • Race relations – Attitudes
  • Occupations – Pastoral industry workers
  • Settlement and contacts – 20th Century
  • Kimberley area (WA SD51, SD52, SE51, SE52)
  • Northern Territory (NT)
  • Savage, Matt
  • Cattle trade — Australia — Kimberley Region (W.A.)
  • Kimberley (W.A.) — Description and travel
  • • Author’s Introduction: ‘Boss Drover’ is the story of a man who is still alive as this is written. Matt Savage, peerless drover and cattleman, was a great name not so long ago around the campfires of central Australia and the desolate Kimberley region to the north-west. … I sat down with him in Alice Springs for several weeks, asking questions and taking replies on a tape recorder. … What I had in the end was not a chronological story of one man’s life but a series of anecdotes; tragic, hilarious, and sometimes horrifying…. I have changed some names, and altered events where the original might have upset a few very old men or their relatives. …what remains is among the most honest accounts ever given of a very tough and brutal era of our history. ..