Many big names in the northern cattle industry will be on hand to support today's (Thursday, August 7) Brisbane Ekka launch of the CQU Press publication 'Horsebells and Hobblechains'.

Meanwhile, cattle dog Woody and bush poet turned author Jack Drake (2001 Bush Poet of the Year) are among the VIPs for tomorrow's (Friday, August 8) launch of another CQU Press book, 'The Cattle Dog's Revenge'.

CQU Press Director Professor David Myers said he had arranged large banners to celebrate the launches in the Ekka's Agforce Meating Centre.

Professor Myers said 'Horsebells and Hobblechains' was about the old-timers who worked in the cattle industry from the Kimberley through the Northern Territory to Outback Queensland.

"Author Jeff Jill has persuaded 28 leading cattlemen to tell their life stories in their own words ... they made their own way as drovers, cattle station managers, stockmen and cattle buyers ... what emerges triumphantly is that they were happy with their hard lives in the northern Outback," he said.

Professor Myers said 'The Cattle Dog's Revenge' would remind a reader of Banjo Paterson's 'The Man from Ironbark'.

"If we Australians want to read books that are not Yankee imitations, but are distinctively bushie and uniquely our own, then Jack Drake's your man," he said.

ENDS For details call Professor Myers via 5552 4960 or 0419 778 208