AUSTRALIANA BIOGRAPHY Northern Territory –

Kellie Arrowsmith was a country girl whose idea of a hairdo was tying a ponytail whenever she wanted to go horse riding. But in her early twenties she left her sleepy hometown of Albury on the NSW/Victoria border for the bright lights of the Gold Coast, and soon found herself working in a succession of unexciting jobs just to keep up with her now-glamorous lifestyle. After spending two years as a frazzled receptionist for an adult entertainment agency, Kellie decided to stop booking the jobs and start taking them. So it was that she found herself travelling to Gove, a mining town in East Arnhem Land, where she had her first stint as a skimpy: a barmaid who wears not much clothing for big money. Skimpies can work in the NT, in WA, in the Hunter Valley of NSW – wherever there’s a bunch of blokes with a fly-in fly-out lifestyle who enjoy a cold beer at the end of their shift. Kellie thought her new job would take her all round the country, but she hadn’t planned on falling in love – not with Dave, a rough-and-tumble outback character with a big heart and the world’s worst four-wheel-drive, and not with the Northern Territory way of life. But she did, and instead of diamonds and dust, Kellie got crocodiles and denim cut-offs – and a whole lot of stories to tell about a side of outback life that’s a long way off the beaten track.

• 337 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : colour illustrations ; 24 cm #030625
• “Skimpy* A feisty barmaid who works in outback pubs in denim cut-offs and a bikini top”
• Arrowsmith, Kellie — Humor
• Women — Northern Territory — Biography
• Country life — Northern Territory — Biography
• Northern Territory — Description and travel