'It was 1969 when Alex Nicol first opened the microphone at the ABC to announce, 'This is All Ways on Sunday'. Very few people would have heard him. ABC regional audiences on Sunday morning were miniscule. A year later, the three-and-a-half-hour program was essential listening for tens of thousands across the country and its audience continued to grow. Driven by a network of reporters all around Australia and, increasingly by listeners, it had tapped into a rich mine of stories about us.
'Alex was just in time to hear the voices of the last of the WWI soldier settlers, and to meet the man who still cut sleepers for the railway by hand in the Pilliga. There was the fourteen-year-old who spent his days at the races, the last Cobb & Co driver, and the silk stockings the Cattle King Sir Sidney Kidman provided to telephonists in post offices all over the back country. It was our history being told by the people who made it. And pity help any reporter who phoned when the beloved radio drama Blue Hills was on air. Now, almost 50 years later, Alex has collected these stories in a book that captures the tenacity, wit and adventure of regional Australians.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
