Beyond the Big Run: Station Life in Australia's Last Frontier

'I'll be lucky to last a bloody year,' was the prediction of nineteen year old Charlie Schultz. That was 1928, when he first arrived to take up the management of Humbert River Station. A tiny run-down property in a tangle of wild ranges, neighbour to the vast and legendary Victoria River Downs, Humbert was at the very edge of Australia's last frontier. There were hostile blacks in the ranges, fences were almost unknown and wild cattle overran the stations. Battling loneliness, hardship and the wild bush itself, Charlie was to last the year. He went on to work Humbert Station for another forty-three years.Gathered from extensive interviews with Victoria River District historian Darrell Lewis, Charlie's remarkable life-stories intersect with the colourful events and characters of the day. Here are the renegades, ruthless bosses, floods and droughts, gun fights and spearings, Christmas sports and horse races that capture the historic sweep of Charlie Schultz's extraordinary life and achievements.