Central Queensland University Press has just staged its biggest country book launch ever. Red Dust Rising: Ray Fryer - The Man from Urapunga by Marion Houldsworth (CQU Press RRP $28.95) was launched this recently in the Showground at Charters Towers to a cheering audience of some four hundred country people.

The launch was hosted by Mayor Brian Beveridge and the launch speech was made by Bush Tucker Man Les Hiddins. Les told about his frequent visits to Ray Fryer’s Urapunga cattle station on the Roper River Bar and how he learned how to find bush tucker from the elderly Aboriginal women who lived on the station. It was an alcohol-free station.

The station was also used as home for Professor Harry Messel of Sydney University who did his crocodile-research project in the Roper River. The station borders on Arnhem Land and is close to where Mrs Aeneas Gunn lived when she wrote We of the Never Never.

Independent MP Bob Katter also spoke and gave his two bobs’ worth about bush people being the salt of the earth.

What made this book launch unique was that cattleman Ray Fryer slaughtered a beast and brought in a cooking team of twenty of his family and friends. On an open campfire they cooked cauldrons of stew and more cauldrons of corned beef and damper and huge drums of spuds and sweet potatoes and damper, all washed down with billy tea on the coals. They gave a sit down dinner to all 400 people. The crowd was then entertained by two bush bands and singers.

Old Silvertail, Professor Myers said, “Well, normally in a book launch, publishers tend to give people half a glass of sherry, a dry biscuit, sell them a book and shunt them out the door quick sticks. This is the first book launch I’ve ever been to where everyone is invited to eat as much beef as they can handle!” CQU Press sold over $5,500 worth of books during the evening..

Author Marion Houldsworth is an accomplished oral historian from Sussex in the UK. Her previous book for CQU Press was the best-seller, Barefoot through the Bindies. Marion spends three months every year touring around outback Queensland in an old Toyota ute with a single swag in the back. She tape records the life stories of Australia’s old bushies. ‘My favourite accommodation is the Starlight Motel and my swag is my home,’ she said.

Her next book is entitled Beyond the Range.

By Professor David Myers Photos:.

Old Silvertail (looking the part), bush master cook Toby and Ray Fryer, the cattleman celebrated in the book.

Bush Tucker Man Les Hiddins with the author of Red Dust Rising and Barefoot through the Bindies, Marion Houldsworth.