Kelsey turns the page

It's one of the topics that Boulia author Kelsey Neilson explores to great effect in her debut novel, Coolibah Creek, released last week.

No one who reads her action-packed story of drama and romance could fail to be filled with joy at the description of a long-awaited storm: "The softest sprinkle of rain, velvety as snowflakes, stroked the hot iron of the roof. Precious, gentle droplets fell, as if the rain knew how raw the drought's wound was on the land."

It's one of many passages in the 335-page book that's filled with the lifetime of western living that has been Kelsey's privilege.

She grew up at Charleville, doing well enough at school to be named the dux of her year, and emerging with plans to be a primary school teacher.

"I decided to have a year off - I wanted to experience life before going back to school - and I never went back. I'm too much of an outdoors person."

A variety of jobs - as a bank clerk, a cocktail waitress, running a roo works, being a furniture store saleswoman, working in a hospital kitchen - percolated down to a position governessing for her aunt, Pat Fennell, at Alderley station, north of Boulia.

That's where she fell in love with the big open country of Queensland's north-west and where she met her future husband.

She's lived at Two Rivers station ever since, teaching her children, minding the local rodeo's finances, and helping to make a School of the Air sports camp a reality for bush kids looking for a way to transition smoothly to city living.

Although Kelsey says her novel is all invented, one can't help but hark back to her passions as her main character Bec Roberts dreams of a future of sustainable grazing nurtured by artesian water, or puts an officious bank manager back in his place.

Like women before her, Kelsey says she's not one to sit on the sidelines and whinge.

"I like to get in and have a go," she said.

This meant that when a council by-election beckoned, she saw it as an opportunity to test the waters and see if it were her thing.

Being a councillor for Boulia Shire has turned out to be very rewarding, if "achingly slow" at effecting change.

It turns out that writing is also her thing, and may be the catalyst for changes in how life on the land is viewed, at least by other women, the most likely readers of Coolibah Creek.

"I had no specific message for an audience in mind when I started," Kelsey said.

"Then I thought, if they could understand that connection families have with the land, that would be a good thing.

"I wanted it to have more depth than a light romance.

"I've been interested in the relationships between people across the world.

"Some people are manipulative, and my characters explore some of that."

It's a storyline that takes readers from a desperate drought-stricken droving trip to the scrutiny of Canberra's media and on to the luxuries of an environmental summit at Cape Town's best hotel.

It took Kelsey about five years to write, often jotting down notes in her Elders notebook at the back of a mob of cattle on a muster before rushing back to her keyboard to let her ideas flow.

"I sent my manuscript to Allen and Unwin's Friday Pitch, not thinking for a moment they'd be interested.

"I was thrilled when they said they were."

Then came the hard slog of rewriting and refining her work, all fitted in around a roaring drought, being Boulia's deputy mayor and a number of social commitments, a process Kelsey described as "pushing through Gladwrap".

"Once I pushed through the emotional burden that everyone in drought has, and found my creative mind, I felt pretty proud."

She's already writing a sequel to Coolibah Creek and says she hopes she can write several more novels.

It's an exciting prospect for Kelsey and all the people who loved the story of Bec and Andy and their fight to live a good life in Australia's outback.