Ion Llewellyn Idriess, OBE (20 September 18896 June 1979) was a prolific and influential Australian author. He wrote more than 50 books over 43 years between 1927 to 1969 - an average of one book every 10 months, and twice published three books in one year (1932 and 1940). His first book was Madman's Island, published in 1927 at the age of 38, and his last was written at the age of 79. Called Challenge of the North, it told of Idriess's ideas for developing the north of Australia.

Several of his works, The Cattle King (1936) and Flynn of the Inland (1932) had more than forty reprintings.

Biography

Ion Idriess was born in Waverley

Waverley, New South Wales

Waverley is an eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Waverley is located 7 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Waverley Council....

, a suburb of Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. From his late teens, he worked in rural New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, particularly in the Narrabri

Narrabri, New South Wales

Narrabri is a town and seat of Narrabri Shire Council Local Government Area in the North West Slopes, New South Wales, Australia. Narrabri is situated on the Namoi River and lies northwest of Sydney. It sits on the junction of the Kamilaroi Highway and the Newell Highway...

 and Moree

Moree, New South Wales

Moree is a large town in Moree Plains Shire in northern New South Wales, Australia. It is located on the banks of the Mehi River in the centre of the rich black-soil plains....

 districts. He travelled extensively around the state, working in a variety of itinerant jobs including employment as a rabbit

Rabbit

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...

 poisoner, boundary rider, drover

Drover (Australian)

A drover in Australia is a person, typically an experienced stockman, who moves livestock, usually sheep or cattle, "on the hoof" over long distances. Reasons for droving may include: delivering animals to a new owner's property, taking animals to market, or moving animals during a drought in...

, prospecting for gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

 as well as harvesting sandalwood

Sandalwood

Sandalwood is the name of a class of fragrant woods from trees in the genus Santalum. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and unlike many other aromatic woods they retain their fragrance for decades. As well as using the harvested and cut wood in-situ, essential oils are also extracted...

. He also worked as a shearer

Shearer

A shearer is someone who shears, such as a cloth shearer, or a sheep shearer.Additionally, Shearer is the surname of people:-In sports:*Alan Shearer , English footballer*Bobby Shearer , Scottish footballer...

 and dingo

Dingo

The Australian Dingo or Warrigal is a free-roaming wild dog unique to the continent of Australia, mainly found in the outback. Its original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to...

 shooter. While working as an opal

Opal

Opal is an amorphous form of silica related to quartz, a mineraloid form, not a mineral. 3% to 21% of the total weight is water, but the content is usually between 6% to 10%. It is deposited at a relatively low temperature and may occur in the fissures of almost any kind of rock, being most...

 miner at Lightning Ridge

Lightning Ridge, New South Wales

Lightning Ridge is a town in north-western New South Wales, Australia, in Walgett Shire, near the southern border of Queensland. The Lightning Ridge area is a world epicentre of the mining of black opals and other opal gemstones. Lightning Ridge has the largest known deposits of black opals in the...

 in about 1910, he wrote short pieces for The Bulletin

The Bulletin

The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...

about life on the opal fields.

He later headed north, working in several tin mines around Cairns and Cooktown including his own claim. In 1913 he moved to Cape York where he lived with an aboriginal tribe, learning their customs and lifestyle.

With the outbreak of war, in 1914 he returned to Townsville and enlisted in the 5th Light Horse Regiment, AIF

Australian Imperial Force

The Australian Imperial Force was the name given to all-volunteer Australian Army forces dispatched to fight overseas during World War I and World War II.* First Australian Imperial Force * Second Australian Imperial Force...

, as a trooper. He saw action in Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

, Sinai and Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, being wounded at Beersheba

Beersheba

Beersheba is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the seventh-largest city in Israel with a population of 194,300....

 and Gallipoli

Battle of Gallipoli

The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...

 - where he acted as spotter for noted sniper Billy Sing

Billy Sing

William Edward 'Billy' Sing, DCM was a Chinese Australian soldier who served in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I, best known as a sniper during the Gallipoli Campaign. He took at least 150 confirmed kills during that campaign, and may have had over 200 kills in total...

.

After returning to Australia and recuperating from his wounds, he travelled to remote Cape York

Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland at the tip of the state of Queensland, Australia, the largest unspoilt wilderness in northern Australia and one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth...

, and worked with pearlers

Pearl hunting

Pearl hunting or pearl diving refers to a largely obsolete method of retrieving pearls from pearl oysters, freshwater pearl mussels and, on rare occasions, other nacre-producing molluscs, such as abalone.-History:...

 and missionaries in the Torres Strait

Torres Strait

The Torres Strait is a body of water which lies between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is approximately wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost continental extremity of the Australian state of Queensland...

 islands and Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 where he worked as a gold miner. Other ventures included buffalo shooting in the Northern Territory

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...

, and journeys to Central and Western Australia.

In 1928 Idriess settled in Sydney where he wrote as a freelance writer. His writing style drew on his experiences as a soldier, prospector, and bushman. He wrote on a multitude of topics, including travel, recollection, biography, history, anthropology and his own ideas on possible future events. His books were generally non-fiction, but written in a narrative, story style. Idriess wrote from real life experiences using knowledge he had personally gained by travelling extensively and working at a variety of occupations. "Idriess was no stylist, but his writing was immediate, colourful, well paced and, despite the speed at which it was written, always well structured."

Although he generally wrote under his name, his early articles for The Bulletin

The Bulletin

The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...

were written under the pen-name of "Gouger". When travelling, Idriess was known by the moniker "Jack".

In 1968 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 for his services to literature.

Idriess died at a nursing home in Mona Vale

Mona Vale, New South Wales

Mona Vale is a suburb in northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 28 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre of the local government area of Pittwater Council. Mona Vale is also part of the Northern Beaches region.-...

 in Sydney on 6 June 1979, at the age of 89.

1927 to 1945

• Madman's Island (1927). Fiction version and Idriess's first book. Published by Cornstalk Publications. All other Idriess titles were published by Angus and Robertson.
• Madman's Island (1938). Non-fiction version.
• Lasseter's Last Ride (1931). An epic of Central Australian gold discovery.
• Flynn of the Inland (1932). Tale of the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
• The Desert Column (1932). Diary of an AIF trooper in Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine.
• Men of the Jungle (1932). Gold and tin prospecting in Queensland.
• Gold Dust and Ashes (1933). Story of the New Guinea
  New Guinea
  New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
  
   goldfields.
• Drums of Mer (1933). History and legends of the Torres Strait Islands.
• The Yellow Joss (1934). Collection of short stories.
• Man Tracks(1935). Tracking skills of Indigenous Australian of the Kimberley region.
• The Cattle King (1936). The story of Sir Sidney Kidman
  Sidney Kidman
  Sir Sidney Kidman was a pastoralist in Australia and controlled huge tracts of land.-Early life:Sidney Kidman was born near Adelaide third son of George Kidman , farmer, and his wife Elizabeth Mary, née Nunn...
  
  .
• Forty Fathoms Deep (1937). Pearl-diving community of Broome, Western Australia
  Broome, Western Australia
  Broome is a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, north of Perth. The year round population is approximately 14,436, growing to more than 45,000 per month during the tourist season...
  
  .
• Over the Range (1937). Story of the Kimberleys.
• Lightning Ridge (1940). Based on Idriess's opal prospecting experience at Lightning Ridge.
• Headhunters of the Coral Sea (1940). Story of the Torres Strait Islands.
• The Great Trek (1940). Tale of July 1864 expedition to walk from Rockhampton to Somerset Bay near the tip of Cape York Peninsula to establish a settlement, "Somerset".
• Nemarluk: King of the Wilds (1941). An indigenous Australian "outlaw" jailed at Fannie Bay Gaol
  Fannie Bay Gaol
  Fannie Bay Gaol is a historic gaol in Darwin, Australia. The gaol operated as Her Majesty's Gaol and Labour Prison, from 20 September 1883 until 1 September 1979...
  
   in Darwin
  Darwin, Northern Territory
  Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. Situated on the Timor Sea, Darwin has a population of 127,500, making it by far the largest and most populated city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, but the least populous of all Australia's capital cities...
  
  .
• The Great Boomerang (1941). A scheme for developing the Australian outback.
• The Silent Service Action (1944). Stories of submarine warfare. Written with T.M. Jones.
• Horrie the Wog-dog (1945). A canine's adventures with the AIF in Egypt, Greece, Crete and Palestine.

1945 to 1969

• In Crocodile Land (1946). Travels across Queensland and the Northern Territory, fishing, hunting and trading.
• Isles of Despair (1947). Story of a shipwrecked Scotswoman (Barbara Thomson) in the Torres Strait Islands.
• The Opium Smugglers (1947). Chinese opium smuggling on Cape York.
• Stone of Destiny (1948). Diamond mining and exploration in Australia. Later edition titled The Diamond - Stone of Destiny.
• One Wet Season (1949). Experiences in northern Queensland.
• The Wild White Man of Badu (1950). Story of a ruthless man's ambition to establish an empire among the islands of the Torres Strait. Complements the author's previous, related book Isles of Despair.
• Across the Nullarbor (1951). Story of Idriess's own drive across the Nullarbor from Sydney to Perth and return in a Peugeot 203.
• Outlaws of the Leopolds (1952). A story told from the aboriginal point of view, set in the King Leopold Ranges
  King Leopold Ranges
  The King Leopold Ranges are a range of hills in the western Kimberley region of Western Australia. Crossed by the Gibb River Road about east of Derby, part of the ranges are covered by the King Leopold Ranges Conservation National Park, managed by the Department of Environment and Conservation...
  
   in Western Australia.
• The Red Chief (1953). A story of Cumbo Gunnerah, Indigenous Australian life and military strategy in New South Wales before European settlement.
• The Nor'-westers (1954). Story of pioneering in the Kimberley region.
• The Vanished People (1955). Social anthropology.
• The Silver City (1956). A history of Broken Hill
  Broken Hill, New South Wales
  -Geology:Broken Hill's massive orebody, which formed about 1,800 million years ago, has proved to be among the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits. The orebody is shaped like a boomerang plunging into the earth at its ends and outcropping in the centre. The protruding tip of the...
  
  .
• Coral Sea Calling (1957). Tales of northern Australia.
• Back o' Cairns (1958). Story of gold prospecting in the far north.
• The Tin Scratchers (1959). Story of tin mining in the far north.
• The Wild North (1960). Stories of the North of Australia.
• Tracks of Destiny (1961). History and future possibilities for the development of northern Australia.
• My Mate Dick (1962). Stories and anecdotes of prospecting in Queensland.
• Our Living Stone Age (1963). A work of popular anthropology.
• Our Stone Age Mystery (1964). Part-two to Our Living Stone Age.
• Challenge of the North (1969). More ideas for developing Australia's north.

Other works

Idriess wrote a number other books and pamphlets as well as having several collections of his works published.

The Mining and Prospecting series
A series of four titles which were basically "how-to" works, the first being commissioned by the Australian government as a means of opening up of the "outback" during the depression years.

• Prospecting for Gold (1931)
• Cyaniding for Gold (1939)
• Fortunes in Minerals (1941)
• Opals and Sapphires (1967)

Pamphlets

• Must Australia Fight? (1939). A political strategy - basically World War II propaganda.
• Onward Australia (1945). More propaganda, covering post-war development, and Australia taking its role in the region and the world.

Collections

• Gems from Ion Idriess (1949). A collection of extracts, published for schools.
• Ion Idriess's Greatest Stories (1986). A recent, two-volume set of six of the most popular titles.

Volume I: Flynn of the Inland, The Cattle King and Lasseter's Last Ride;

Volume II: The Desert Column, Lightning Ridge and The Silver City.

• The National Edition (1938, reissued 1941). A set of all of Idriess's works up to 1938 published as a uniform set of 12 hardback volumes.

The Australian Guerilla series
Written as a set of specialist military handbooks for the Australian Army

Australian Army

The Australian Army is Australia's military land force. It is part of the Australian Defence Force along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. While the Chief of Defence commands the Australian Defence Force , the Army is commanded by the Chief of Army...

 for the World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

• Australian Guerilla - Shoot to Kill (1942). Practical details on accurate shooting.
• Australian Guerilla - Sniping (1942). Tactics for concealment and stalking, and how to identify an enemy's position by drawing fire.
• Australian Guerilla - Guerilla Tactics (1943). Bomb making, booby-traps and mines.
• Australian Guerilla - Trapping the Jap (1943). Particularly aimed at the expected Japanese military invasion of Australia.
• Australian Guerilla - Lurking Death (1943). Stories of snipers in Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine
• Australian Guerilla - The Scout (1943)