Last Days of a Wilderness
Australian History Memoir Antiquarian & Collectible Cultural Studies Adventure Environmental History Australiana North Queensland Regional History
Last Days of a Wilderness is Percy Trezise’s hard-to-find 1976 memoir of the final years when Cape York Peninsula still lived up to its name—an empty, croc-haunted frontier reached only by air, foot or battered coastal lugger. In 216 pages of first-hand adventure the bush-pilot, explorer and eventual protector of the region records the people, places and wildlife that vanished almost overnight once the road and mining leases arrived. Written for young adults yet treasured by collectors, the narrative fuses autobiography, natural history and oral testimony to create a time-capsule of Australia’s last great wilderness before diesel and dozers rewrote the map.
What makes this particular copy worth owning is its vintage status: a clean, tight hardback still wrapped in its original illustrated dust-jacket. The price has been clipped (common for Australian gift editions) and there is light foxing to the page edges and final leaf—typical of our tropical climate—yet no inscriptions, dog-ears or cracked hinges, so the book presents beautifully on the shelf. As an antiquarian piece it sits at the intersection of biography, geography and cultural history, documenting not only Trezise’s own exploits but also the voices of the Aboriginal elders, cattlemen, miners and missionaries who shared the frontier.
Collectors hunting for authentic Australiana prize Trezise titles because so many were read to pieces in school libraries; intact hardcovers with jackets are now genuinely scarce. Whether you are building a North Queensland collection, researching Indigenous rock-art sites, or simply want a gripping true story that pre-dates today’s eco-travel memoirs, Last Days of a Wilderness delivers both scholarship and adventure in one durable package.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
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