Review of Warburton, Carl, 'Buffaloes: Adventures in Arnhem Land': ed. and introduced by David Andrew Roberts and Adrian Parker. 3rd ed. With a 'Foreword' by Professor John Mulvaney (Marleston, SA: Gecko Books, 2007). Pp. xxiii, 261, on high gloss paper, 7 pages of historic black and white photo plates, plus four modem ones in colour. ISBN 0977511413. RRP A$ 19.95.

Abstract

In 1934 Angus and Robertson, the Sydney publishers, issued an engaging memoir, 'Buffaloes', a book now described as a "Classic Australian True Story", a record of the post-war adventures of two young Australian ex-servicemen, Carl Warburton (b. 1893) and Lawrence Whittaker (b. 1894), the latter an English migrant serving with Australian units. The first was the author of the text. They had met first behind the lines on Gallipoli in 1915, and had resolved to do something audaciously different, should they survive hostilities. At that postwar meeting the toss of a coin determined that the adventure should be in the Northern Territory rather than Brazil. The author is an elusive figure as far as the standard literary histories are concerned, although Morris Miller had in 1940 listed Warburton's later novel, White Poppies (1937), the text of which is discussed now by John Mulvaney in his 'Foreword' to the new edition. The purpose of the latter - and of the present editors - is to contextualise a book which is still sui genesis, despite an earlier wartime reprint. It had been titled 'Life and Adventures in Arnhem Land'.