Thursday, July 3, 2014

The Lure Of The Golden West: Experiences and Adventures in a Bush Brotherhood of Western Australia by Thomas Sidney Groser.

The Lure Of The Golden West: Experiences and Adventures in a Bush Brotherhood of Western Australia: Early Problems and Conquests: All about Group Settlements of the West: The Land of Sunshine and Opportunity by Thomas Sidney Groser.  Hardcover book (no dust jacket) published by Alexander-Ouseley Limited (no date, probably 1920s), 287 pages with a few extra pages of advertising.


The Lure Of The Golden West. Recently i've been keeping my eyes open for Western fiction. Yes, that's right, books about cowboys. It's a subject I know very little about... actually... I know absolutely nothing about it. So I guess my keeping my eyes open is more about trying to learn something and to give some of it a go. The reason I want to “give it a go”, is that I often get inquiries about the genre and when potential customers are confronted by the three old and tired titles I currently have in stock, they tend to loose interest very quickly. So the idea of finding something that someone may want is quite appealing particularly when there is $ involved, and it is this thought and the picture of a man on a horse on the cover, that attracted me to this title.

...except this book has nothing to do with Western fiction.

It has everything to do with the history of Western Australia particularly with something called the Bush Brotherhood. So what is the Bush Brotherhood? From what I can gather it had (or has?) something to do with religious personnel and activities in remote parts of Australia.

1897 - Nathaniel Dawes establishes the Bush Brotherhood (Church of England) with preachers on horseback providing ministry to those living in rural and remote areas”

also this article has some information http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/16276521

I quickly realised my error re this books lack of cowboy contents after reading the subtitle. The words “Western Australia”, “Group Settlements” and “Land of Sunshine and Opportunity” are possibly the best indicator that the book does not contain any shoot outs, campfire yarns or dodgy Indian stories and one can only hope that as with “Westerns”, there are some horses and big hats involved in this history of Western Australia. The words Bush Brotherhood on the other hand escaped my notice at the time of purchase which is not a bad thing, but is something I should possibly have noticed at the time.  

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