"There is something about the Gulf Country that seems to become part of you." With its great rivers, grassy plains and mangrove-fringed coastline, Queensland's remote Gulf Country is rich and fertile land. It has long been home to Aboriginal people and, since the 1860s, also to Europeans and to settlers with Chinese, Japanese, and Afghan ancestry. Richard J. Martin tells the story of a century-and-a-half of exploration and colonization,...