In Stockmen's Footsteps How a Farm Girl From the Blacksoil Plains Grew up to Champion Australia's Outback Heritage

Jane Grieve was born and raised on a farm on the Darling Downs in Queensland. She grew up with the wind in her hair and the rich black Darling Downs soil between her barefoot toes, her vivid imagination captivated by the tales of her colonial forebears and the romantic notion of Australia's outback. From the outset she was determined that her life was not going to run along conventional lines, and it didn't. While working for architect Bill Durack, brother of legendary Australian identities Mary and Elizabeth Durack, she met R.M. Williams. R.M. exhorted her to work with him, Hugh Sawrey, Mary Durack, Bob Katter Sr., Ranald Chandler, Sir James Walker, and other prominent Australians to build a very special monument. This is the previously untold story of the establishment of one of Australia's foremost Bicentennial projects—the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame and Outback Heritage Centre—at Longreach in Queensland. Told through the eyes of a person whose role in the inner sanctum was pivotal to its success, it is an extraordinary true story of the legendary identities, selfless determination, and sheer hard work involved in the creation of what was intended as a Mecca for all Australians.

Jane Grieve has written a column on rural living for the Courier Mail and she has had her blog read out on ABC radio. She has been inducted into the Australian Stockman's Hall Of Fame, and is the author of a book of stories based around her Courier Mail columns.