Walk-About by C. Price Conigrave. 1938 1st Edition. Ref: B3084

Title: Walk-About.
Author/Editor: C. Price Conigrave.
Synopsis: "Which way?" I asked my black boy, meaning "Where are you going?" "Me go walk-about," he answered. "More far?" I inquired. "Might be," was the native's reply. Price Conigrave's Foreward.
Aa a very small boy, Price Conigrave shook hands with H. M. Stanley, after a lecture given in Adelaide by the great African explorer. As a lad, he started on a zoological assistant's job in Perth Museum, where even the care-taker was an old fellow who had been a thousand 'miles up the Amazon. Those were impulsions to make him "go walk-about" in later life. The years of the great gold dis coveries in the West went by; Conigrave ended sixteen years' service in the Museum; and In 1908 the W.A.Government allowed him a pound-for-pound subsidy to take his mates, Lachlan Burns and Roy Collison, and go exploring "the big slice between Admiralty Gulf and Cambridge Gulf." That is portion of "the Kimberleys," wild and rugged lands of our far north-west. Jack Wilson and J. Murray-Prior joined up with the original trio, and off they started. Distances were (and are) magnificent. When you heard that some body was camping or working "up the road," he might be 400 or 500 miles inland. Theirs was mostly a scientific expedition, to collect birds, mammals, Insects. When they met Harry Skinner, keeping a pub near the Six-Mile. he hit them off: "You're these bug and beetle bastards, aren't you?" He meant no personal reflection;only the word of endearment. How Jack Wilson' joined up — "A grey-bearded stockman zig-zagged into the Wyndham billiard-room. ''I've been having a bit of a kick-up,' he volunteered, 'but I want to get away from the booze with your outfit. You're after bugs and beetles and damned things like that, Murray-Prior told me.'"Years later, Jack Wilson was stockman for a "Bovril" cattle campany the Drysdale River, was speared by blacks, and survived; but at last went out to it, and lies buried "some where out on the track back from Wyndham." It was what old Jack had al-ways awaited. In his young days there had been a girl "It was the old mother who parted us. She reckoned I was a flash good-for-nothing, and so I buzzed off to the north. That's why I came to. Kimberley thirty years ago. . . . One day yoijH be back home, and 111 get tight In Wyndham and then go up the road again. Not a flaming soul in the worldTlcare whether I peg. out or not. The old horse'll miss me, and that's all." His girl had been 25 years dead, and he still carried a letter written by her — "It's worth more to me than all Connor Doherty's shin-plasters put together." The shin-plasters were Kimberley currency: tradesmen's notes from 5s up to £20. Burns, on a later expedition, was tangled in weeds and drowned in the Forrest River, when taking Bishop Trower to pick a site for an abo. mission station. "Large expanses of good pastoral country, great cypress-pine belts, traces of gold and copper," were discoveries of commercial interest announced by this expedition upon its return. An inland walk-about in Papua is the next movement described by Mr. Conigrave — not equal, of course, to the great ventures of the lamented Jack Hides, but picturesque nevertheless. Afterwards came the round-Australia motor race with Norman("Wizard") Smith as leader, Charles Gordon piloting the second car, John Fletcher with movie camera, and Conigrave as newspaper scribe and "still" photographer. They circled the continent by road in 6 weeks 3 days. Though it . was not an exploration, this continuous fast run was material for a lively and adventurous story, and Mr. Conigrave has the skill to make the reader share his knowledge gained in that flying survey. Conditions for the aborigine in and around Darwin (see page 210 and onwards) are presented as something for Canberra to think about.
Illustrated: Many old black and white illustrations by the author.
Publishing Details: J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1938, 1st Edition.
ISBN #: 
Cover Type: Blue cloth board.
Number of Pages: 250.
Condition: Book is tightly bound with no loose or damaged pages.  Moderate tanning, with light foxing and marking to a few pages.. Cover shows fading. No dust jacket.
Images shown are of the item you will receive.
Book Weight: 597g
Packed Postal Weight: 797g
Book Measurements: 21x14x3.5cm
Packed Postal Measurements: 23x16x6cm
Posted as: Small parcel with tracking.
Posted From: Collectables Centre, Mumbil, NSW 2820, Australia.

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