On the Wallaby begins with the influence the English novelists, (Charles Dickens, Harry Kingsley and Anthony Trollope) had in inspiring many a young man to emigrate and try their luck in Australia. There are entertaining and authoritative chapters on the surveyor-explorers (Sir Thomas Mitchell, G.W. Goyder, and Alfred Cumming), teamster-selectors, bush hawkers, ‘wild colonial boys’ (the Hunter brothers), Nat Buchanan, the drover, the pioneer inventors of the shearing machine, wool press and windmill (Frederick Wolseley, James Ferner, James Alston and Sidney Williams), rabbiters, country brewers (the Resch brothers) and the woolbroking fi rm of Winchombe, Carson Ltd. Walsh writes of the importance of those two great weekly newspapers, the Sydney Mail (1860-1938) and the Australasian (1846-1946). In one chapter the author focuses on Sir Samuel McCaughy and the bitter Vermont Merino controversy (1885-1906), which ruined so many old Merino Studs. This is a social history of the ourback at its best.