Outside Country makes an invaluable contribution to the rethinking of inland Australia. Through essays that mix the broad sweep of history with personal perspectives drawn from diaries, letters, oral histories and literature, it examines the rich and varied social, cultural and environmental histories of regions that continue to play a crucial role in the ongoing development of the Australian nation. While most Australians, now live in the major cities on the coast, much of the country's wealth is still derived from the interior, a vast area of scattered and often remote communities, mining towns and pastoral homesteads all linked by what historians J.W. McCarthy called the Inland Corridor.