Northern Gateway

by Frank Flynn

F. P. Leonard, 1963, [Second Printing], colour illustrated frontispiece, illustrated end papers (maps), black and white photographic plates, and illustrations, hardcover, dustjacket

Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing to edge and corners, ex-library with stamps to title page and end papers, tape residue to front and back end papers, a little crumpling and staining to edges, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows some edge and shelf wear with some rubbing, bumping, chipping and small tears to edges and corners (see photographs)

“Doctor, journalist, anthropologist, priest – the author of “Northern Gateway” is a man whose qualifications are as broad as his outlook.
His book is an invitation to join him on his workaday travels among the places and people of one of the emptiest, most challenging regions on earth, the “Top End” of Australia’s Northern Territory.  This is the Australia two thousand  miles from the big cities of the south, with a way of life and an “atmosphere” all its own; and it is as unfamiliar still to the average Australian as a far off, foreign land.
the story begins in the Gateway itself, Darwin, tracing the growth of this isolated city for its not-so-distant days as a pearling port, more Oriental than European, through the war-inspired awakening of the 1940s to the latest and greatest expansion that has come in the wake of jet air travel.
Beyond the Gateway, it is a tale of mines and missions, of cattle stations and native settlements.  In direct, reporter’s style, with many a moment of humour, the author describes his journeyings among these lonely, busy places.  And at each one he introduces people … uranium miners at Rum Jungle, unbelievably cheerful patients in leper colonies, aboriginal stockmen and lugger crewmen station owners and their families gathered in a rare moment of gregariousness at an outback race meeting.”