Warwick Newton

It seems the opening up of Australia’s mineral resources was made possible by copious supplies of ice-cold beer. This memoir of a hard-drinking exploration geoscientist is a treasury of yarns about Outback characters, old prospectors, bushies, miners, publicans, and the geologists and geophysicists who found and managed some of Australia’s most significant mineral resources. A riotous read, Diary of a Dinosaur is also an eyewitness history of the development of Australia’s mining industry in the late twentieth century. Warwick Newton’s memoir spans 40 years of field trips as an exploration geoscientist in Western Australia, Queensland, New Guinea, the Northern Territory and South Australia. Hot, dry days in Australia’s most remote and beautiful locations are rewarded by riotous drinking sessions, pranks, practical jokes, exuberant risk-taking and brushes with tolerant outback police. Darwin’s devastation by Cyclone Tracy sets the challenge of drinking all the warming beer before it goes off. At some roadhouse bars you undergo scrutiny in a vestibule before they unlock the door. Once you’ve drunk enough beside a Northern Territory river on a hot day, the risk of crocodiles in the water seems to diminish. If you turn your glass upside down on the bar in Queensland, be aware of what message you’re giving. A couple of tips: always place your swag with the opening facing away from the campfire, so you don’t walk into the embers in the dark; similarly, park your vehicle facing the road so that, next morning, you know which way in the endless scrub it lies.