′How can mere red dirt and stones and scrubby trees and shrubs and rises and falls in the land and haze and a vast blue sky be so potent? Such was its power, even in intense heat, even...

Born in Perth in 1934, Ian Parkes left home at sixteen to work as a jackeroo on a merino stud in South Australia. He spent a year on a remote property near Broken Hill, before returning to...