The Fortune Hunters

Frank Clune is quite a prolific author, and has lived an interesting life of varied experiences. This is only the first book of his that I have read, but it is immediately obvious his style is easy and enjoyable.

In this book Clune forms an enterprise with a number of other businessmen in Sydney to try and hook into the uranium rush in the Northern territory of Australia as a prospector. There is money to be made if a suitable discovery can be made, so buying a four wheel drive vehicle and a Geiger counter, and finding a geologist, he heads off to drive the 1900 odd miles up to Darwin.

This story, of (no surprise, unsuccessfully) seeking a uranium source, takes around a quarter or a fifth of the book. Interspersed, in a meaningful, interesting and informative way are many side stories of history, of people and of places. These, along with the story of the journey, make up a pretty solid history of central Australia.

This was mid 1950s, there wasn't a formed road from Adelaide to Alice Springs, only a degraded dirt track, the Northern Territory was still not a State in its own right, being administered by South Australia.

Clune certainly comes across as a man with ideas ahead of his time. Thoughts from utilisation of land, farming and irrigation techniques, to the treatment of Aboriginal peoples and tourism were far ahead of reality in Australia.

His side stories were well selected and interesting, including McKinnons Patrol - a camel mounted Alice Springs policeman who, while on routine patrol discovered an Aboriginal man was murdered by seven of his compatriots, made a 121 day journey (with only his two Aboriginal guides) to track and apprehend not only those men who committed the murder, but also arrested a man illegally in possession of a gun, a witness to this; a man who was trespassing in the Aboriginal Lands, and employed Aboriginals without a permit; a man who beat his wife, breaking her legs. Covering 2181 miles on foot and camel, he returned to Alice Springs with seventeen persons in custody.

This review only scratches the surface of the contents of this book, it contains some great anecdotes and tales from history. For me it was all the more interesting have travelled through this area and visited some of the places mentioned (albeit some 40 years after Clunes travels).

Four stars, and I will be keeping an eye out for more of his books.