The Great Trek

An abbreviated version of this tale called The Wilderness Trek was published in 1944, although the original novel was written in 1937 after the author's 1935 visit to Australia. Here it is presented in its original form; at 615 pages, it is among the usually concise Grey's longest novels. It is the story of one of the most dangerous cattle drives ever undertaken across the outback, covering several thousand miles of rough wilderness and parched desert and ending at the Kimberly Mountains on the northwest coast, where gold was plentiful but beef was in short supply. A pair of American cowboys, Sterl Hazelton and Red Krehl, who left home after an unfortunate shooting incident, help the Aussie drovers and find both adventure and romance down under. (Readers should be aware that an ugly racial epithet appears in dialogue about Australian aborigines.).