Tales of a bushman and businessman

And this is all laid out in print in his self-published autobiography, Bushman Bullrider Bushman - well, let's say a sanitised version of his life.

The title says it all. His book maps his life as a six-year-old on a remote property at the foot of the Carnarvon Ranges, to life on the professional bull-riding circuit in the US, to droving and working in the mines at Mt Isa.

Now living in Miriam Vale, Tim says the idea to write began about 30 years ago.

"When we were busy doing stuff like riding the bulls, people used to say, 'Man, you should write a book'," he said.

Then, in 2000, Tim was at Camooweal when the Drovers Hall of Fame was being set up and met Bruce Simpson, who had published Packhorse Drover and gave him words of encouragement. The seed was definitely sown.

Four years later, Tim's move to Miriam Vale saw him run into a little bit of strife with the locals, further pushing him towards writing.

"I had moved from Mt Isa and those wide, open spaces, and dropped off one little planet and landed in another - here in Miriam Vale.

"I thought maybe writing a book would help so people would understand where I was coming from, so that's sort of where it started."

After watching The Wolf of Wall Street and thinking "Maybe this bloke and I have something in common", it was time to pick up the pen.

Tim wrote until he reached a stage where he knew he had to go a step further, but he didn't know how. He looked in the phone book for an editor and came across a number in the phone book.

"Robyn took one look at this stuff and she said to me: 'Have you ever heard of Roald Dahl?'

"Well, there are Dahls down at Miriam Vale, and I go, 'Is he from Miriam Vale?'."

Despite this, Robyn persevered and helped put Tim's story into chronological order, and cut out stories that would get him sued "or shot"!

The most difficult part was finishing the book, Tim says, as this covered the death of a friend and mentor.

"It was a really touchy subject - this was after weeks and weeks - and that's when I got a personal trainer to help.

"Everybody was giving it to me because we were three months late with the process and these people were saying, 'When's this book coming out?' and they were starting to disbelieve me."

Finally Tim finished it and had it printed at Anderson's Printing in Rockhampton, rather than going through a publisher.

"Well, you hear a lot - I read a lot of Robert Kiyosaki and he couldn't get his books published, and that girl who wrote Harry Potter couldn't, either.

"So I'm thinking no one is going to want to publish this - why would you bother hitting your head against a brick wall and going to 50 publishers when they are only going to give you $1 out of the book and keep the rest as profit?"

Now he is marketing it himself and selling it online through a website set up especially: www.timconnollybooks.com.au

Did he ever think he would write a book?

"No, no! I was the worst kid. The kid from hell!"

However, Tim has always liked to read - particularly business books and autobiographies about people who get themselves into trouble and then make their way out again.

In Bushman Bullrider Businessman, Tim describes life growing up as a young child in the 1960s on Mt Owen, a remote property about 150km north of Mitchell.

In simple language, he tells of life at a time when there were no phones, electricity and very few vehicles - in fact, the only way of getting off the family property was on the weekly mail truck.

Tim takes the readers through his childhood adventures of hunting for dingoes with the local Aboriginal Gadd brothers, his fascination with hide platter Dusty Taylor and his terrorisation of his many governesses.

Being sent to boarding school was a lowlight.

"When they drove away leaving me at Nudgee College, that day must rate up there as the worst, loneliest, heart-breaking time of my life."

He returned home after completing grade 10, but this was in the mid-1970s when the cattle depression hit and he came back home to a skeleton staff. The Aboriginal stockmen, whom he worshipped, had been let go, and his father had hit the bottle. Then true devastation - his mother left them.

"It took me about the next 20 years or so for me to get over that."

Tim writes of his light-bulb moment - reading an advertisement for a bull-riding school run by an international bull rider, John Quintana.

He missed the school, but he still got to have lessons from Allen Flood, who had been taught by Quintana.

Tim was 17 when he won second prize on a bull. He was hooked on the rodeo and this began the next chapter of his life - professional bull riding in the US for the next six years.

A horrific leg break then saw Tim move into droving - and he has some pretty hilarious descriptions of what makes a good drover.

No one will be able to read Clancy of the Overflow in the same light again.

However, he conjures up a harsh life of scurvy, boils and just plain hard work, which sees him take up a mining job at Mt Isa.

Sprinkled with anecdotes of girlfriends and near misses, Tim then tells of how he meets the right woman and how they buy the block of their dreams at Agnes Waters.

There is no happy ending, however.

Tim still lives on his block, where he runs a mob of cattle, and he works for a heavy lifting company that has been working on resources projects in the Gladstone region. The next step?

"I am at the cross-roads of writing fiction, or non-fiction, even a children's story. It's finding the subject."

He will be officially launching the book on May 20 at the Rockhampton Regional Council Library as part of an authors festival.